The most representative form of the theory is that shaped by Darwin, known as that of natural selection and survival of the fittest. It assumes and depends on the conjoint action of two leading principles-the principle of heredity as inherent and active within the living organism, and the principle of environment, as modifying the action of heredity-the latter, i. e., environment, acting in two ways, viz.: as stimulating and improving, and as eliminating and destroying. And thus, it is alleged, under the continuous propagation of living organisms with accidental variations, amid different environments, all the so-called species of living beings, including man, have been produced. It involves the essential bestiality of primal man, as Darwin expressly tells us that he sees no distinction in "kind," but only one in "degree" between man's highest intellectual faculties and the feelings of a brute.

The competence of this evolutionist hypothesis for the proof of man's origin is rendered doubtful not only by the weakness and difficulties that appear in it at the point of transition from brute to human state, but also by all the mere assumptions, unfilled gaps, and varied difficulties in the offered account of the movement up to that point. These show it to be an unproved explanation. The noted.

following points deserve to be

(a) At the very beginning the ambiguous phrase, "natural selection," is adopted to denote the explaining cause of the evolutionary advance. The word "selection" expresses mental choice, something confessedly not present in the case. It is "selection that does not select, except metaphorically." Its use tends to an 1 St. George Mivart, in The Forum, March, 1889, p. 183.

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impression that it acts positively as a direct efficient cause, whereas the outcome of the explanation exhibits it mainly, if not entirely, in the form of a negative result, viz. : that in the struggle for existence the weaker organisms fail to survive and cease to exist. "Natural selection works not constructively, but destructively." 1 For the positive progress in the evolution, this showing that some weak organisms do not "survive," is not, as has been often pointed out, equivalent to an explanation how higher forms "arrive." The ambiguous phrase, with its simply surreptitious active sense, is plainly and peculiarly weak when used, as it is, to show positively the way these higher and better forms appear.

(b) To accomplish this task particularly, however, another working principle is invoked-" accidental variations" through natural descent. But this is, if possible, even less reliable and satisfactory than the other, to account for the rise of nature from its lowest organisms up to the human grade. For the "accidental variations" depended on, as between improvements and destructions, are too many-sided, uncertain, and shifting, to warrant rational faith that they will all, or a controlling majority of them, unite in the formation of Man out of the primordial life, or even from an ape-that is, that the "accidental," in the modifications in all the organs, senses, and complex adjustments will, in their particularities and combinations, move on to one point, the evolution of a human being. That all the needful modifications should take place by chance variations and chance destructions and chance preservations, and hold their own gains and carry them on through millions

1 Prof. C. W. Rishell's "The Foundations of the Christian Faith,"

P. 428.

of years, is utterly incredible-as any calculation of chances will show. St. George Mivart justly styles the process: "The haphazard action of the destructive forces of nature on minute haphazard variations in all directions." It simply relegates the life-forms of the earth to chance-work. Yet this is Darwinian evolution.

(c) The addition of the affirmation of the "survival of the fittest," is not sufficient to carry the offered proof to its conclusion. The import of this phrase must be analyzed before we can see whether that which it stands for is assuring for the result. It is a correlate designation to the failure and perishing of the weaker organisms in the struggle for existence in environment. The theory requires for reaching the goal of the evolution—that those surviving be the more highly, finely, and effectively organized a progress in excellence. But are these "the fittest," i. e., the ablest to survive? In the struggle of existence, the strongest live and the rest go under. Are not the higher and advancing forms of organization the more complex and susceptible to injury and destruction? Do not the conditions which kill off the feeblest harm the rest? Are severe conditions the best for the development of high organizations? Are not those that survive rather an injured class, with less fineness of structure and rank? When summer's drought destroys half of the vegetable organisms, the remaining half are not likely to be an improvement on the ordinary standard. Or if the improvements should be credited to the specially helpful environments, as these are also "accidental" in the variations of actual life, how shall their gains be continuously preserved and guided on the upward line? The strongest are not always "the fittest" for this ele 1 The Forum, March, 1889, p. 99.

vating and spiritualizing process by which the complex and highly organized human race is to come from molluscs or amœbæ.1

So

(d) It is to be borne in mind that no new species has been discovered to have been actually produced by it. This is an impressive fact. Though the theory teaches us to think of "species" as an illusion, it yet admits the reality of present grades, lower and higher, in the forms of life. If these specific types are viewed, not as fixed, but each as in constant progress, the advance over the differentia between the so-called "species" becomes what has been meant by "transmutation of species." But no scientist has discovered an instance of such an advance. Only varieties within the species have been produced even by artificial crossings and culture. with Darwin's pigeons. Fossil geology gives indubitable evidence of new species appearing one after another, with no proof whatever of lineal descent or the evolution of one out of the other. Prof. J. P. Cooke, of Harvard, though accepting the hypothesis, confesses: "It seems strange that with all the attention which has been directed to the point during the last twenty-five years the fact of a transition between two well-marked species has not yet been established conclusively. . . We can in no case point unhesitatingly to other species in lower strata from which they descended, on the evidence of an unbroken series in the intermediate forms between the two. Take the case in which we are the most interested, that of our own race. Assume all that is claimed in regard to the antiquity of man. Still there is a definite horizon of the tertiary epoch below which man is not, but above which his remains are found in 1 Quatrefages, "Human Race," pp. 94-95.

ever-increasing abundance, with all the features of man and his works as strongly marked as they are to-day. Skeletons of these primeval men, and their belongings, are to be seen in our ethnological museums; and there are no greater differences of structure between them and ourselves than between the different races which inhabit the earth at the present day. But if man be descended from an anthropoid animal of arboreal habits,' it is passing strange that, so far as any direct evidence goes, he should have appeared on the earth thus suddenly, and that we can find no traces of his progenitors of the first, second, third, or any other generation." This is a farreaching confession by an evolutionist.

(e) We must add to it the further fact, that the asserted law of evolution has not been found effectual, within the world's historical period, for any such modifications as promise transmutation of species. There is not an instance within these thousands on thousands of years, of animal forms having developed new organs or improved the old. The ancient sculptures and pictures exhibit them as they are now. All this time the forms have been essentially stationary, except in modifications under domestication, from which they tend to return under the law of atavism. A process so slow as to have done nothing perceptible in forty or fifty centuries cannot be justly credited with having created all the earth's life forms, except upon the clearest and most positive evidence.

This view of the question is fortified by the wellestablished fact that species are held in fixed lines of descent, with specific identity permanently continued, by a law of sterility of offspring, where offspring have been "The Credentials of Science the Warrant of Faith," p. 244.