Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith. Robert Patterson
phrases, and the Latinized words of scientific men, as much as we can, into the vulgar tongue; to state the subjects of discussion so as to be understood of the people. So we shall put the whole business of Darwinism and development before you, reader, in a nutshell, by simply asking you the question at the head of this chapter, "Was your mother a monkey?"
What a question!
Well, then, your grandmother? her grandmother? or does it seem less offensive, or more likely to you to go back some thousands of years, and say your forefathers were apes?
That is exactly what Mr. Darwin says when we translate his scientific language into the vulgar tongue: "The early progenitors of man were no doubt once covered with hair, both sexes having beards; their ears were pointed and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail having the proper muscles. The foot, judging from the condition of the great toe in the fœtus, was then prehensile, and our progenitors, no doubt, were arboreal in their habits, frequenting some warm forest-clad land. The males were provided with great canine teeth, which served them as formidable weapons."[5] This ancient form "if seen by a naturalist, would undoubtedly have been ranked as an ape or a monkey. And as man, under a genealogical point of view, belongs to the Catarhine or Old World stock (of monkeys), we must conclude, however much the conclusion may revolt our pride, that our early progenitors would have been properly thus designated."[6] So here you have your genealogy, name and thing fully described. Mr. Darwin thinks it is quite an honorable pedigree: "Thus we have given to man a pedigree of prodigious length, but not, it may be said, of noble quality. * * * Unless we willfully close our eyes, we may, with our present knowledge, approximately recognize our parentage, nor need we feel ashamed of it. The most humble organism is something much higher than the inorganic dust under our feet; and no one with an unbiased mind can study any living creature, however humble, without being struck with enthusiasm at its marvelous structure and properties."[A] There are people, however, who do not grow enthusiastic at the idea of their long-tailed progenitors; but there is no accounting for taste in such matters!
For elderly people, who do not take so enthusiastically to monkeys as his junior readers, Mr. Darwin has provided a rather less gymnastic ancestry. How would you like to have a fish for your forefather? If it were one of Neptune's noble tritons, or the Philistine fish-god, Dagon, or a mermaid, it might not be so repulsive as the ape; or even a twenty-pound salmon, flashing its silver and blue in the sunlight as it spins the line off the reel, might not be so utterly disgusting as the monkey burlesque of humanity. But, alas! Mr. Darwin has been sent to this proud nineteenth century as the prophet to teach us humility, and here is the scientific statement of the structure of our fishy forefathers: "At a still earlier period the progenitors of man must have been aquatic in their habits, for morphology plainly tells us that our lungs consist of a modified swim bladder which once served as a float. These early predecessors of man thus seen in the dim recesses of time must have been as lowly organized as the lancelot or amphibioxus, or even still more lowly organized."[7]
That certainly is a very humble origin. We are not, however, by any means to the end of our pedigree. Mr. Darwin says that your codfish aristocracy are descended from a race of squirts—the squirts which you picked up on the shore and squeezed, when you were a boy, discharging these primitive Babcock Extinguishers upon your playfellows, irreverently regardless of the harm done the poor squirt, the ancestor of the human race. If you doubt it, here is the latest deliverance of infallible science upon the subject. He describes the Ascidians: "They hardly appear like animals, and consist of a simple tough leathery sack, with two small projecting orifices. They belong to the Molluscoida of Huxley, a lower division of the great family of the Mollusca; but they have recently been placed by some naturalists among the vermes or worms. Their larvæ somewhat resemble tadpoles in shape, and have the power of swimming freely about. * * * We should thus be justified in believing that, at an extremely remote period, a group of animals existed resembling in many respects the larvæ of our present Ascidians, which diverged into two great branches, the one retrograding in development and producing the present class of Ascidians, the other rising to the crown and summit of the animal kingdom, by giving birth to the vertebrata."[8] Thus it appears that Mr. Darwin deduces his origin, and that of mankind in general, from one of these Ascidians, or, in plain English, makes them a race of squirts.
The notion of evolution is a belief that all living beings, plants as well as animals, have not been created, but, like Topsy, just grew, from the very smallest germs or spores. Evolutionists inform us that all kinds of organisms have been evolved from four or five primeval germs or spores; or more consistently with their great principle, that the simple gave birth to the differentiated, from one primeval germ or egg. Mr. Darwin alleges four or five primal forms, acknowledging that analogy would lead him up to one. But other members of this school consistently and boldly follow up the stream to its fountain, and allege a single primeval living seed as the origin of all living things, and that this must have been a microscopic animalcule, or plant spore, of the very lowest order, which, multiplying its kind, gave birth to improved and enlarged offspring; and they, in their turn, grew, and multiplied, and differentiated into varieties; and so, in the course of endless ages, the poorer sorts perishing and the better sorts prospering, the world became filled with its existing populations, without any new creative acts of God, and without any particular providential care over the new species.
The particular process according to which this multiplication and improvement took place, Mr. Darwin calls Natural Selection. Every creature tends to increase and multiply; and the very slowest breeders would soon fill the earth, were their multiplication not checked by hunger, by the attacks of enemies, and by the struggle for existence. But all are not born alike strong, or swift, or of the same color; some of the same brood are better fitted to escape enemies, or to fight the battle of life, than others. These will survive, while the weak ones perish. This Mr. Wallace calls, the survival of the fittest. They will transmit their superior size, or swiftness, or better color, or whatever superiority they possess, to their offspring. The process will go on in successive generations, each adding an infinitesimal quantity to the stock gained by the past generation; just as breeders of improved stock increase the weight of cattle by breeding from the largest; or breeders of race-horses increase the speed by breeding from the swiftest. In this way varieties from the same family will grow into different species. And, as only those differences which are beneficial to the animal are preserved, they will grow into improved species; and, as variations of all sorts take place, so all sorts of varieties and species arise in process of time. All will thus tend to perfect themselves according to the laws of nature, and without any special oversight or care of God, or of anybody but Natural Selection; which Mr. Darwin takes special care to describe as an unintelligent selector. He defines the nature which selects to be "the aggregate action and product of natural laws," and these laws are "the sequences of events as ascertained by us." He ridicules the idea of God's special endowment of the fantail pigeon with additional feathers, or of the bull dog's jaws with strength, and says, "But if we give up the principle in the one case, if we do not admit that the variations of the primeval dog were intentionally guided in order, for instance, that the greyhound, that perfect image of symmetry and vigor, might be formed; no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations alike in nature, and the results of the same general laws which have been the groundwork through Natural Selection of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided."[9] This, then, is the grand distinctive difference of Mr. Darwin's mode of producing the various animals; namely, that it is unintelligent, their variations are not designed nor intended by the Creator, but they are the results of a method of trial and error, producing a hit-and-miss pattern. The failures all perish, and the successes live and prosper; but there is no intentional or special guidance of God in the business. And the business includes the whole process of peopling the globe, from the creation of the first four or five germs down to the last formation of human society. God is thus dismissed from the greatest part of the world's life, including all human