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Title: Evolution made plain
Author: John Mason
Release date: August 28, 2025 [eBook #76749]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1923
Credits: Tim Miller, Tom Trussel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN ***
POCKET SERIES NO. 467
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
Evolution
Made Plain
John Mason
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1923,
Haldeman-Julius Company.
EVOLUTION MADE PLAIN
_The time has come when scientific truth must cease to be the property
of the few--when it must be woven into the common life of the
world.--Agassiz._
_Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for
granted, * * * but to weigh and consider.--Bacon._
_The man who will not investigate both sides of a question is
dishonest.--Abraham Lincoln._
_Intolerance is the product of an ignorant, primitive mind. We should
tolerate anything of an intellectual nature except intolerance.
Freedom of opinion is the root, flower and fruit of liberty--its very
essence.--Anonymous._
WHAT EVOLUTION IS AND IS NOT
Addison said, “The real substance of a bulky volume can be condensed
into a small pamphlet.”; and it is believed that the fundamental
principles of a great scientific discovery like evolution can be
outlined in a few pages, and in a way so plain and in words so
simple that any one who is at all interested can get a fairly good
understanding of its scope. With this idea in mind an attempt is here
made to explain evolution, to tell what some of its laws are and how
they work, and to present briefly some of the evidences that support
the doctrine.
Contrary to popular belief evolution is not confined to the origin of
man, but it explains how all living things have become as we now see
them, and how and why the most of them are being changed. It teaches
that all living species of plants and animals, including man, also
the thousands of extinct species which have left their fossil records
in stratified rocks, have been developed from a few small and simple
forms--probably one, and that a mere cell. And it shows, too, that this
has been done by the operation of natural laws, the same laws we see in
operation today.
Evolution does not teach that every living thing is “day by day, in
every way, growing better and better.” On the contrary, it shows that
many species deteriorate, are driven to the wall and become extinct,
while only the best fitted survive. For instance, of the twenty-five
orders of reptiles in the Jurassic period--known to the geologists by
their fossils--only five have come down to our times. But out of the
reptilian orders, then the highest forms of living things, have come
the superior orders of later times--birds and mammals. And this is
evolution.
We sometimes hear the statement that scientists are not in agreement
in regard to evolution. The point of disagreement is in respect to the
part played by natural selection in the development of species, and not
as to whether or not evolution is a fact. The discussion is in regard
to the _how_ of the fact and not the fact itself. No great scientist
since Agassiz, who died in 1873, has opposed evolution.
Neither does evolution teach that one species may develop into
another, as that the goat may develop into the deer, or that the ape
may evolve into man. For one species to become another existing species
it would have to take the back track to the point where the two species
began to diverge and travel the other route--which of course would be
impossible. This may help in getting the idea: the larger divisions and
groups of animals (fishes, reptiles, mammals, etc.) may be compared
to the main or primary branches of a tree, the families and orders
(as the deer, the cat, and the dog) to the secondary branches growing
from the primary ones, and the species to the further divisions of
the secondary branches. Now we can see that one species can no more
become another--that is, any now existing--than one branch of a tree
can become another. A species can, in time, if subject to the proper
conditions, split into varieties which, if developed far enough, may
become distinct species. But no one of these species can be said to
have been evolved from a contemporary species, for all have been
changed, and the stock from which they came has ceased to exist as
such. Each of the existing species would have a distinct name such
as, for instance, cow, bison, Cape buffalo, yak. Now suppose the
fossil remains of the common ancestor of the above-named species were
found--what should it be called, cow, bison, Cape buffalo, or yak? It
would be neither, for it would probably differ as much or more from
them as they differ among themselves. Thus is laid to rest the idea
that evolution is a theory that man was evolved from, or by way of, the
monkey or the ape. They are as distinct species as is man himself.
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES OF PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT
All life on this globe is divided into two great classes, vegetable
and animal. All animals belong to one or the other of two grand
divisions: invertebrates (those without backbones) and vertebrates
(the backboned). The latter class, comprising more than 30,000 known
species, is subdivided into five great groups: fishes, frogs, reptiles,
birds and mammals. At the top of the highest group, mammals (those
which bring forth their young alive), is man. Birds and mammals were
evolved from the reptiles--both offshoots of the same stock--and are
contemporaneous in development and descent.
The various classes and groups of animals, both in the order of
development from the simple to the complex and in the time of their
arrival, are in the order named: first the small, one-celled animals
(many species of which are found today) then more complex organisms of
the invertebrate division, later the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and
mammals, including man.
The story told by the geologist is in perfect agreement with those laws
of development which we call evolution. The lowest, simplest forms
of life are the oldest as is shown by their fossil remains (bones,
shells, etc.) found in stratified or water-laid rock. These fossils
were deposited in sediment as it formed in sea and lake thousands
and millions of years ago. In the movements of the earth’s crust the
sediment of ancient sea and lake bottoms was raised above the water and
became land, the sediment hardening into rock. All sediment is formed
on a level, but in its up-heaval--generally slow, sometimes violent--it
is often tilted at various angles exposing its edges. It is from this
out-cropping, stratified rock (the sum of which is often several miles
in depth) that forms the outer part of the earth’s crust that the
geologist reads the story of creation.
The oldest or lowest water-laid rock is the archaean in which there
are no fossils. Above this, in the stratum formed in a later period
are found evidences of the beginnings of life. After millions of
years of growth and development the shell fish, at the top of the
invertebrate group, is produced. Then comes a period of uncounted
millions of years in which the fishes, the lowest of the vertebrates,
are being developed--millions of years to bridge the chasm between
the two main divisions of the animal kingdom; millions of years to
produce a backbone! Other long periods of time, filled with change and
development, come and go--the age of the coal plant and of the frogs,
succeeded by the age of reptiles, giant monsters, cold-blooded and
of small brain, swarming sea and land. Long ages pass; the reptilian
monsters have become extinct, leaving as their representatives only a
few dwarfed species--the crocodile, the lizard, the snake, the turtle.
Of mammals the lowest orders arrive first, followed by the more highly
developed until finally man appears.
Naturally, fossils of land animals are few compared with those of
marine animals. Practically all the remains of the latter sank and
were covered with the slowly accumulating sediment, while the bones of
the former only rarely were swept out to sea and lake. Rarest of all
fossils are those of man. A few have been found antedating history by
several thousand years, but we get a far more complete knowledge of
our primitive ancestors from the tools and weapons that they left in
sediment and drift before the dawn of the present era. We can trace
his progress upward through all degrees of culture from the rude old
stone age of a hundred thousand years ago, through the new stone age,
the copper and bronze age, and the iron age to the beginning of written
records.
Yet, so old is our planet and so long ago since life dawned on it--so
long even since the first mammals appeared--that man’s arrival a
hundred-or-so thousand years ago is but as yesterday. To paraphrase
an illustration by Slade and Ferguson: “Suppose we take the earth as
365 million years old, and consider this period as a year, one million
years being taken as a day.” Then, on this scale the vertebrates came
into existence late in the summer or early fall, the mammals not
earlier than the end of November, and “the whole period of man is not
likely to have been further back than the evening of December 31st, and
the earliest historic evidence (in Egypt) is not more than ten minutes
before the last midnight.”--“the last midnight,” of course, being the
present.
EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION
Of the many evidences of the kinship of all animals including man only
a few can be mentioned in this book. All animals, man included, are
constructed on the same general plan. They have the same organs--brain,
heart, lungs, digestive tract, nerves, skin--performing the same
functions for the same purposes. The skeleton of man can be compared,
bone for bone, with that of a monkey, bat or seal. The bat’s membranous
wing is ribbed with bones corresponding to the bones of a monkey’s or a
man’s hand. The wing of both the bat and the bird has one bone from the
shoulder to the first joint, and two bones from the first to the second
joint, like the fore leg of quadrupeds and the arm of man--thus proving
that the fore leg, the arm and the wing are only modifications of the
same limb. The biped bird and biped man are modified quadrupeds.
All the five hundred muscles of the human body correspond with the
muscles of other mammals. Even the brain, wherein man differs most
from the lower animals, has the same chief fissures and folds in both
man and the animal nearest man, the orang-outang. Man and the other
animals have the same five senses and the same sense organs. They in
common have the same basic emotions, such as surprise, jealousy, pride,
hatred, shame, anger, grief, affection, and a sense of the ludicrous.
Bucks says, “So is man’s so-called human mind rooted in the senses and
the instincts of all his ancestral species; and not only so, but these
senses and instincts still live in him, making up, indeed, far the
larger part of his current everyday life; while his higher psychical
life is merely the outgrowth and flower of them.”
The old formula was: “Man is governed by reason; brutes by instinct.”
But science has proved that lower animals are not guided altogether
by instinct, that many of their actions are the results of mental
activities remarkably similar to reasoning. On the other hand man
himself has instinct--and well for him that he has, for his reason, as
yet, is only partially developed. If we will but subtract from the sum
of man’s actions, not only those prompted by instinct, but those also
that result from habit, custom, prejudice, and the emotions of anger,
revenge, vanity, and other elemental passions, we will not feel like
crying from the housetops that “man is governed by reason.”
Man and the lower animals have similar diseases. He is liable to
contract from, or communicate to them, such diseases as glanders,
hydrophobia, cholera, tuberculosis. Drugs, tobacco and alcohol have the
same effects on animals as on us.
Of course the dog, the ape, the horse and man do not perfectly agree in
their corresponding parts and in their natures--if they did they would
belong to the same species--but their similarities are so remarkable
that they have a profound meaning for the thoughtful, however
meaningless they may be to the thoughtless and the prejudiced.
In embryonic development are found evidences not only of man’s close
relationship with all animals but of the long, long route he and they
have travelled in their common descent from the simpler forms of life.
Darwin says that the whole process of reproduction, from the first act
of courtship by the male to the birth and nurturing of the young, is
very much the same in all mammals.
The lowest forms of animal life, the one-celled animals, are without
sex, and multiply by dividing into half, each half developing into
a complete cell, which in turn is subjected to the same dividing
process. Many species of these lowly organisms still exist, never
having developed further than the unicellular stage. All higher forms,
as of fishes, reptiles, birds, mammals, begin life at this point--as
a single cell. The cell, germ, or ovum of an embryo (the young of a
mammal before birth) when fertilized divides, forming two cells, the
two divide into four, the four into eight, and so on, until there is a
colony of similar cells enmassed, and with a little rod of tissue--the
beginnings of the spinal column--running through. The embryo at this
stage is passing beyond the lowest grand division, the invertebrates.
Entering the vertebrate division the embryo passes into the fish group.
Deep grooves, gill slits, appear on the side of the neck of the embryo
and six pairs of arched branches of arteries arise, just as in fishes,
as if to give blood to the gills. Later all but one of these pairs
disappear. The arms and legs of the child, like the legs of all other
embryos, begin to develop, and continue to do so for some time, on the
same plan as the fins of fishes.
Further along in its development the embryo assumes all the
characteristics of the quadruped even to the tail which in the human
embryo at this stage is longer than its legs. During the sixth month
the entire body of the human foetus, except the palms and soles, is
covered with fine, woolly hair.
Thus far the human embryo has developed in the same way, has undergone
the same changes, has passed through precisely the same stages as the
embryo of other animals. In its further development it leaves them all
behind except those nearest man. Its tail disappears, and it now has
an opposable or thumb-like great toe which with the monkey and the
ape is a permanent characteristic. It is only in the latest stages of
development that the human embryo presents marked differences from the
embryonic ape.
Of the fact that the embryo in its development from a single fertilized
cell passes through all the stages representative of the principal
animal divisions, and in a progressive order from the simple to the
complex and highly developed, there is no explanation but that of
heredity and descent--of descent of the higher animals from the lower
with heredity transmitting the records of the remote ancestral stages.
Each stage, as of the fish, the quadruped, the ape, is a sign board
along the route of man’s descent. The nine months’ embryonic period of
each of us is an epitome of the history of the race down to the human
period.
Nor do the evidences of race-history as revealed by the child cease
with its birth. The babe is nearer the lower mammals than is the
adult man. When it acquires the use of its limbs it begins life as
a quadruped. Its blundering attempts in learning to stand erect and
walk is evidence of the fact that man’s peculiar mode of locomotion is
a late acquirement. Like the lower animals the babe makes known its
wants by means of natural language; it later acquires artificial or
spoken language in the same slow, laborious way that it was acquired
by the race. At the average age of three years the child has become
self-conscious; his mind has passed the mental stage of all animals
below man. Psychically he has become man.
In certain periods of youth the child is a tree-climber, a cave-digger,
childish sports that hark back to periods passed through hundreds of
thousands of years ago in the childhood of the race. At a certain
stage his emotional nature has developed to the point that he is
conscious of wrong-doing. This is what the old theologians called
“the age of accountability.” If there is a grain of truth in the
chaff-heap of Mosaic mythology the fall of Adam indicates the point in
the development of the race when conscience had dawned and feelings
of remorse had begun to stir within. Man had reached the age of
accountability. But prior to the “fall” there was a rise.
Rudiments or vestiges are also evidences of the descent (or ascent) of
the higher forms of life from the lower. Rudiments are incomplete parts
of the body which have become arrested in their development, and which
are now of no use, nor would now be of use if fully developed. They are
relics handed down to us by the laws of heredity from a long-past age
when they were well developed and useful to our lowly ancestors. Though
we outgrow primitive conditions and stages of development we can not
get rid of the past, but must drag it around with us as the snail drags
its shell.
All the higher animals bear within their bodies the reminders of
a humble origin, some of which are: The incisor teeth of certain
grass-eating animals, so rudimentary as never to cut through; the
small hoof points of the cow which do not touch the ground, and the
rudimentary fifth and sixth teats on the hinder part of her udder;
the splint bones in the horse’s leg--vestiges of toes when he was a
three-toed animal; the scanty, downy hair that covers the human body.
Certain muscles by which animals can twitch the skin are inherited by
some persons who can move the scalp and the ears. The sense of smell in
civilized man has become almost rudimentary. The vermiform appendix is
not only useless but often injurious. It points back to the time when
our ancestors were strict vegetarians--grass-eaters. In the _os coccyx_
man carries about with him the rudimentary bones of a tail. This, with
the fact that the human embryo at one stage has a tail longer than its
legs, is Nature’s everlasting reminder that proud man’s remote ancestor
was adorned with a tail.
In order to get as clear an idea as possible of man’s exact place in
the animal scale we should note the points wherein man differs from
his nearest relatives--the orang, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, the
gibbon--as well as the points wherein he agrees with them. Here are the
most obvious points of dissimilarity. Man walks erect, though in his
first year he goes on all fours, while apes only occasionally walk,
and that in a semi-erect position, their arms, longer than their legs,
reaching the ground, knuckles touching. The nose of the ape is small,
undeveloped; the canine teeth are very large; the mouth projects, and
there is no chin. The entire body except the palms and soles is covered
with hair. The brain capacity of the ape is less than half that of man.
On the other hand there are more points of similarity than of
dissimilarity between man and the apes; and if the points wherein they
differ be examined they will be found to be differences in degree
rather than in kind. The higher apes are entirely without tails; the
embryo of the ape, like the human foetus, loses its tail sometime
before birth. The young ape (monkey also) is born in almost as helpless
a condition as is the human babe. The female ape has two mammary glands
(udders) and they are always on the chest. Adult apes have the same
teeth as man--thirty-two in number, incisors, canines, premolars,
molars. They have the same 200 bones, the same 500 muscles, the same
organs and glands. On their toes and fingers they have flat nails, like
man, instead of claws. On account of the ape’s opposable great toe they
were formerly classed as four-handed; but this was an error. In all
essential respects their legs terminate in feet. Like man they are
bipeds, and like man they have two hands. The brain of the ape, though
much smaller than man’s, as we would expect it to be, is constructed on
the same general plan as his with the same main fissures and the same
groups of cells. There is no “missing link” in the plan and structure
of man’s brain, whatever difference there may be between his and the
ape’s in capacity.
No scientist has ever been so foolish as to say that man and the apes
belong to the same species. There are four species of the higher apes
and one of man, though the one species of man is divided into five
varieties, called “races.” Varieties differ less widely than species.
Individuals within a variety also differ. Differences are no bar to
unity if they are nullified and outweighed by similarities.
Finally, let us keep in mind that while man has departed from the
ancestral type, developing in one direction, the apes have gone off
in another and have acquired characteristics peculiarly their own.
Resemblance in a babe and a young ape is far greater than in a man and
an adult ape. The same is true of the young of all allied species. This
divergence from birth of the adults of different species is strong
evidence of a common origin.
These are only a few of the hundreds of evidences proving that man fits
into the same creative scheme with the lower animals--proving that he,
in common with them, has developed from still lower forms, and that, as
a product of the creative forces of Nature, he is wholly subject to her
laws.
CONNECTING LINKS
There is a greater unity of all life than the many divisions and
sub-divisions of the analyst would seem to warrant. The dividing lines
between the different classes, orders, families and species are more
apparent than real, the barriers of separation not so impassable as
appear at first sight.
To begin at the bottom, there is no hard and fast line drawn between
living and non-living matter--or at least it is not always easy to say
where the line should be drawn. Tyndall says, “The tendency of modern
science is to break down the wall of partition between the organic and
the inorganic, and to reduce both to the operation of forces which are
the same in kind, but which are differently compounded.”
Passing on to the first grand division of life, it would seem that
nothing could be plainer than the line of cleavage between vegetable
and animal life. Yet there is a twilight zone between the two where
each shades off toward the other, and which is inhabited by several
living species of so doubtful a nature that scientists cannot agree
as to which of the two great kingdoms they belong. These doubtful
organisms are claimed by both the botanist and the geologist and are
described in the textbooks of both. Really they do not belong to either
division, but are simply organisms that have not risen in the scale of
life to the diverging point of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
Ascending the animal scale we come to the line separating the
invertebrates from the vertebrates. Here, on the invertebrate side
are species that have the beginnings of a backbone--an elastic smooth
cord--and gill-slits, thus proving their relationship with the fishes,
the lowest of the vertebrates.
The connecting link between the fish and the reptile groups is
the amphibians--frogs, newts, salamanders, etc. The frog in its
tadpole stage is a fish, but acquiring legs and lungs it becomes an
air-breather, a land animal.
Between the reptile and the bird, and having certain characteristics of
both, there are at least three extinct species, known by their fossils.
One of these, archaeopteryx, had the skeleton and feathers of a bird
and a reptile tail composed of twenty vertebrae. Another was a flying
reptile with a bird-shaped head.
Reptiles (snakes, lizards, turtles, aligators, etc.) are cold-blooded,
egg-laying animals. Birds retain the egg-laying characteristic of
reptiles but are warm-blooded like the mammals. The latter differ from
both birds and reptiles in producing their young alive and suckling
them. Between the mammal and its ancestor, the reptile, but classed
with the former is the duck-mole of Australia. It is an egg-laying,
web-footed, duck-billed quadruped. After its young are hatched they
are suckled in a sort of mammary pouch which is without nipples. Above
the duck-mole, but so low in the mammal group that they are not really
mammals are the marsupials (kangaroos, opossums, etc.). Their young are
so immature at birth that they are for some time carried in a pouch by
the mother.
We have now come to the last great chasm--that between man and the
other mammals. As man belongs in the same group with them the chasm is
not so great in the sum of physical characters as is that between the
fish and the reptile groups, or between the reptiles and the mammals.
In regard to man and the higher apes the dividing line, viewed from the
stand-point of descent, is vertical rather than horizontal--like that
between mammals and birds.
There are no species, extinct or extant, between man and the ape. It
is not necessary for the proof of evolution that there should be.
“Missing links” are not more required here than they are between birds
and mammals which were evolved side by side from reptiles. If ten feet
below the topmost bough of a tree there is another branch it is not
necessary to show that there are, or have been, intermediate branches
to prove that both grew from the same trunk. Missing links are required
only _in the line of descent_.
Discoveries of the fossil remains of man are rare for many reasons.
(1) Land animals rarely leave their remains in the sediment of sea
and lake. (2) There is small chance of the sediment containing the
fossils of recently arrived animals--more especially of man, the
latest arrival--being lifted above the water level because of the slow
movements of the earth’s crust. (3) Only those animal remains that
are buried in localities where they will be impregnated with certain
mineral salts will be preserved. (4) They must be able to resist those
destructive agencies (especially erosion by water) that disintegrate
the rock in which they are embedded if they are to come down to us as
evidence. (5) Only a small part of the earth as yet has been searched,
and nearly all the fossil discoveries have been accidental. For these
reasons the geological record in respect to fossil evidences is far
from complete. Yet from time to time new discoveries are filling in the
gaps in the record.
Anthropologists present us with evidences of pre-historic races that
were far lower than the lowest savage of today. Some of the evidences
of man’s existence tens of thousands of years ago were known before
Darwin set the world astir with his revolutionary discovery, and the
old school geologists, like Hugh Miller, who had not been entirely
weaned from scriptural literalism were sadly puzzled in regard to the
evidences of these “pre-Adamites.”
Fossils have been found showing several gradations or stages
in development intermediate between man and his pre-human
ancestor--evidences which, if they do not completely bridge the chasm,
stand as ruined pillars, broken arches, isolated spans of the bridge
over which man was many hundreds of thousands of years in crossing.
The first skull discovered (sixty years ago) of the Neanderthal men
was so entirely different from other pre-historic skulls that one
scientist declared it was a mal-formation; but other fossils were found
later that proved the peculiarities to be racial characteristics.
These men, who lived in Europe down to thirty thousand years ago, were
squat, bent-kneed, thick-skulled, almost chinless, and with ridge-like
projections over deep-set eyes. In skull development they were lower
than any savage of today.
Older than the Neanderthal race, and lower in the human scale, were the
Heidelberg men, said to have been the first really human beings of whom
we have fossil evidences. Judging from the age of the fossil beds they
existed from 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
Thirty years ago were found some of the fossil remains of a creature
in Java, some forty feet below the surface, that show characters
intermediate between the gorilla and the Neanderthal man; “the lowest
human cranium yet described, very nearly as much below the Neanderthal
as this is below the normal European.” This creature was named
Pithecanthropus Erectus (erect ape-man).
Lack of space prevents even a brief description of other and
intermediate types of man, such as the man of Spy, of Naulette, of
Predmost, etc.
As the more man develops (becomes specialized) the farther he is
removed from the lower animals, so, in tracing his descent toward
his origin we find him approaching them, apes included, in general
characteristics, for we approach the point of divergence.
Evolution is a fact. There is no doubt of that in the minds of those
who have investigated the subject without prejudice and with the
acquisition of truth as the sole aim. One may dispute a fact, but he
cannot deny it out of existence. Those who feel a sense of shame for
their close proximity to their cousin, the monkey, are advised to
increase that distance by carrying to higher development those traits
considered peculiarly human: Reason, a sense of justice, of broader
sympathy, and tolerance.
By his great discovery Darwin delivered the heaviest solar plexus blow
to human vanity it ever received. For this he deserves, and receives,
the eternal gratitude of every right-thinking man and woman.
How was evolution brought about? What are its laws, and how do they
work?
NATURAL SELECTION
When the farmer or the stock-breeder selects his seeds or his animals
for propagating purposes he has an eye to a great natural law,
heredity. He knows that scrub animals and the seeds of degenerate
plants will stamp their inferiority upon their descendants. He has
learned that like produces like, therefore he selects such seeds and
animals as will produce those best suited to his purposes. He is not
only guided by his knowledge of a great law of Nature, but in the main
he is following her method in preserving and improving the breed. This
method of changing and improving plants and animals under domestication
is called artificial selection.
Plants and animals in the natural state are capable of multiplying at
so enormous a rate that there is an incessant struggle for existence
going on among them. If it were not for this fierce struggle with
one another and with their enemies and other environmental forces in
which the vast majority die early, the world would be overstocked.
There is hardly a species of animal of which a single pair would not
choke out all other animal life in a few generations by filling the
world with its descendants if all of the one species were permitted
to reach old age. If a pair of elephants (one of the slowest-breeding
species of animals) should bring forth only six young ones, and all
should live to be one hundred years old, their descendants in 750 years
would number nineteen million--a number so great that they would form
a closely-packed herd occupying forty-one square miles. The codfish
produces nine million eggs a year. If each egg should develop into a
mature fish, half of them females, in ten years the sea would be a
solid mass of codfish.
This tendency to increase at so tremendous a rate, and the fact that
no two individuals are exactly alike, supply the material and the
conditions for the great law of natural selection to operate. Each
individual must of necessity compete so fiercely with other individuals
of the same species, and of allied species, and with enemies, with
climate and changing conditions that out of the struggling many only a
few live to propagate. Those individuals that vary from the mass in the
right direction live; the others die, leaving few descendants, or none.
Though like produces like there are no two individuals exactly alike.
If all of the same species were alike there would be no opportunity
for the law of natural selection to operate. Nothing but chance would
determine in the struggle for existence which individuals would live to
propagate their species and which would die without descendants. Nor
would it matter, so far as the species is concerned. But individuals
do differ in their traits in some degree--Wallace has shown that
variation usually amounts from ten to twenty, sometimes twenty-five,
per cent of the varying part--and this variation, even if small, often
spells the difference between an early death with no descendants and a
long life with a numerous progeny.
By the law of heredity the descendants are endowed in a greater or less
degree with the same life-saving characteristics of their parents.
Each generation being subjected to this weeding-out process, and only
a few of the best fitted individuals being selected to preserve the
species, we can easily see that, as the generations come and go, those
essential, life-saving characters or traits are being developed to a
greater and greater degree. And this means change, modification of
species.
With horn or tooth or claw or hoof or sting or poison or odor, among
all the wild creatures that swim or crawl or run or climb or fly, the
struggle for life and food and mate goes on today just as it has gone
on for millions of years. Other factors in the struggle are alertness,
agility, cunningness, sharpness of vision and hearing and smell,
protective color of covering, fleetness of foot and wing, the degree of
heat, the amount of moisture and the food supply.
The traits that survive are of course those that are the most useful in
a given environment. (By environment is meant surroundings, all outside
influences, the not-me of each individual.) A change of environment, of
the conditions of life, calls for a re-adjustment of the traits most
vital to the individual in the new environment. In one environment
one highly developed trait would be most useful while in another
some other character or set of characters would be the saving factor,
because a change of environment means a change of weather conditions,
of the food supply and the means of getting it, of enemies, etc.
From the foregoing brief outline it would seem that only a little
exercise of reason is required of any one to see that natural
selection operating in unlike environments would, in the course of
many generations, produce from the same species types of animals (or
plants) very unlike--not only unlike each other but unlike their parent
species. At first these types derived from a common ancestor would be
only varieties, but varieties are incipient species. Given sufficient
time, and the intervention of natural barriers to prevent the crossing
of extremes, and the creation of new species would be the natural
result.
As a vivid illustration of how the law of natural selection works, and
of how great is the sum of the results of its operation accumulated
through many generations, let us observe one of many modifications
an animal undergoes in its struggle for existence. To the question,
“Why are animals of the arctic regions white?” we ought to be able,
with what we already know of natural selection, to give the answer.
Imagine those lands of snow and ice originally inhabited by animals of
all colors from white to black, or even of all shades of one color,
brown. The animals of what colors or shades, among the flesh-eaters,
would have the least difficulty in stealthily approaching their prey,
and so, be most apt to survive in the struggle against starvation?
And which among the animals preyed on would run the least risk of
detection and so be most likely to escape destruction? The answer
to both questions, of course, would be, “Those whose colors most
nearly conformed to the snowy background.” Imagine this process of
culling out the darker colors continuing for many generations and
we can understand that the whiteness of all arctic animals would be
the inevitable result. We can also see why most wild animals of our
regions are of colors that best harmonize with the brown earth and dead
leaves. Let us keep in mind the fact that while we were observing the
modification of one character, all the favorable variations, however
slight, in every other character that could be of the least advantage
to those creatures were being added up as fast as they appeared.
After several generations, if for any cause the environment were
undergoing a radical change, or if a species had migrated from a widely
different one, a greatly modified animal would be the result. However,
there can be no modification in an animal perfectly adapted to its
environment--provided the environment does not change.
Every organ, and every other part of the body, internal and external,
of every creature in the natural state is subject to modification by
the law of natural selection, just as was the color of the hair or the
feathers of polar animals.
Man’s method of improving plants and animals--artificial
selection--interferes with the work of natural selection. For one
thing, man makes a radical change in the environment of every plant and
animal he domesticates; for another, man selects for other purposes
than the one Nature has in view--that is, if it can be said that Nature
has a purpose.
From the same parent stock man breeds one strain of cattle for beef,
another for milk and butter; one variety of the horse for the saddle
and another for draft purposes. Nature adapts the species to the
environment--never the environment to the species--sacrificing those
individuals that do not measure up to her standard. She seems to care
only for the species, not for the individuals, or only for those
individuals that give promise of a better species.
This secret wrung from Nature (natural selection as a factor in
progressive development) is man’s most precious truth, for it is the
key to his further progress.
To summarize: organisms tend to increase at a great rate; this
intensifies the struggle for existence; organisms vary; in the struggle
for existence the vast majority die early, leaving those that vary
in the favorable direction to live and reproduce; this means change,
progress. This is natural selection.
There is also De Vries’ “Mutations theory” which some scientists
believe to have been an important factor in evolution. It is the
theory that at times a species may progress by “jumps”--that is, that
occasionally individuals come into existence that vary extremely from
the mass, and that they may become the parents of a new species. It is
on account of the relative value attached by some scientists to this
theory and to natural selection that they disagree, and not in regard
to whether or not evolution is a fact.
NATURAL SELECTION IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION
The law of natural selection, or of the survival of the fittest, is
not confined to plant and animal life. Its sway is universal. Every
thing that is born, spawned, hatched, sprouted, conceived, invented,
or founded is tested by this law, and if found inefficient, unfit, is
weeded out, leaving the fittest, the best, the truest to survive.
On the mental plane the law of the survival of the fittest is often
restricted in its operation, and the struggle unnecessarily prolonged,
because of the intolerance of those of the older, dominant belief. The
world lags because they refuse to permit the new idea to meet the old
on equal terms before the only court having jurisdiction over truth and
error--the court of Reason.
Intolerant people--and they are legion--either lack faith in the power
of truth to triumph over error, or they harbor a lurking doubt in their
own minds in regard to the amount of truth embodied in the belief they
so anxiously shield. They regard belief--their belief--as something to
be protected at any cost. Freedom of opinion, intellectual honesty,
truth itself must yield rather than _their_ belief be in jeopardy.
They seem to think it more blessed to believe something they received
at second hand than to investigate and know the truth. With them it’s
“Believe so and so; open your mouths like young mocking-birds and
swallow it, smack your lips and call it good.” For people of that
mental type to tell us to think--why, that is never thought of.
This forcing one to subscribe to a doctrine through fear, or to accept
an idea on authority, belongs to the medieval age. And we resent it--we
whose minds have not been altogether shaped by the kingly, priestly
authority of five hundred years ago. We say, “Give us the evidences of
your belief; if they are sufficient we cannot help believing. Let us
meet in fair discussion and compare evidences. Drop your intolerance.
Let your idea stand or fall on its merits--that’s all we ask of ours.
Let the law of natural selection have a chance to operate.”
Not belief, but truth, is the one essential, and when discussion
reveals the evidence supporting it belief is attracted to it like steel
filings to a magnet. O ye of little faith, doubt not that in a struggle
for existence between truth and error the fittest, that is, truth, will
survive and error be eliminated.
Truth crushed to earth will rise again--
The eternal years are hers--
While Error, wounded, writhes in pain
And dies among her worshippers.
“A lie on the throne is a lie, still, and truth in a dungeon is truth,
still; and a lie on the throne is on the way to defeat, and truth in a
dungeon is on the way to victory.”
“If there is anything that cannot stand the truth, let it crack.”
EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE
The Bible itself contains evidences of evolution. As the Jews climbed
up in the scale of civilization their ideals, their conception of what
should constitute a God, also arose. It is a far cry from the ancient
Hebraic conception of God, down through the prophets to the idea of
divinity as taught by Jesus. Let the reader lay aside his prejudice, if
any he has, be honest with himself, and compare Jehovah of the early
Jews with Jesus’ portrayal of God as a father, as one whose synonym is
live.
Jehovah, according to the early writers, was stern, wrathful,
vengeful--“I will mock you in your calamities”; vain and jealous--“I,
the Lord thy God, am a jealous God”; cruel--hardening the hearts of his
powerless victims in order to punish them for doing what they could not
help doing, and according to Joshua, Jehovah commanded him to kill all
his enemies, old and young, even the children, and he gave the captured
wives of the enemy to the soldiers of the Jewish army; deceptive--“I
have sent lying spirits unto Ahab”; in short, and in very truth, he was
a god having all the frailties and imperfections of man, and not man at
his best either.
Take the Genesis story of creation:--When Jehovah created Adam he knew
(being an all-wise God) that Adam would fall. Therefore, Adam could not
have done otherwise than to yield to temptation; for to have resisted
would have proved God’s foreknowledge false. Then why pronounce a
curse on one (and his billions of descendants) for doing what God’s
foreknowledge made unavoidable?
Again it is said that when Jehovah made up his mind to destroy
the human race “it repented the Lord that he had made man on the
earth”--that is, he had made a mistake, like you and I, and was
sorry of it, like you and I. How like a man was Jehovah in his
short-sightedness!
And this is a part of that story of the origin of man which we are
asked to accept by the anti-evolutionists instead of the scientific
explanation.
Before history there was mythology. Beyond the earliest ascertained
historic facts of every people, of every early nation, was a mass
of myths portraying its childish beliefs concerning its origin, its
gods, its heroes, etc. The Jewish nation was no exception. Scriptural
literalists, those who believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible,
know that all ancient peoples had their myths--all except the Jews.
In the face of a million facts they still contend that the impossible
stories of the early Jews are true as gospel--in fact that they are a
part of the gospel.
The greatest obstacle to the popular acceptance of the doctrine of
evolution is a belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible and its
literal interpretation. The more conservative or orthodox element of
the churches regards the Bible as a direct quotation of the exact
words of God. Their conception of inspiration is that the various
writers merely held the pen while God caused it to move over the
surface of the parchment tracing the characters that spelled his
very words. The fact that the various books of the Bible are written
in almost as many different styles would seem to disprove verbal
inspiration to any thinking mind. Certainly, those books called the
Bible are inspired, and in precisely the same sense as Shakespeare’s
plays, Burns’ poems and Emerson’s essays are inspired--that is, the
writers felt strongly an impulse to write; and in every instance the
writings were stamped with the individuality of the author.
All inspiration is not on the same level--the higher the spirituality
the deeper the source. For example, as one writer has pointed out,
when Paul said, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord
reward him according to his works,” he was not inspired in the same
sublime degree as was Jesus, when, rising above his own sufferings, he
remembered his tormentors in the prayer: “Father, forgive them; they
know not what they do.”
The belief in verbal inspiration has scotched the wheels of progress
at every turn. Four hundred years ago those who taught the rotundity
of the earth were denounced as heretics. It was a belief in verbal
inspiration that inspired the church to force Galileo, who taught that
the earth is not the center of the universe, but that it revolves
around the sun, to make the recantation: “I, Galileo, being in my
seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees before your
eminences * * abjure, detest and curse the error and the heresy of the
movement of the earth.” Even Newton’s great discovery of the law of
gravitation was denounced as “subversive of natural, and inferentially,
of revealed religion.”
A hundred years ago the use of anesthetics in childbirth was opposed in
Scotland on the ground that it was seeking to remove the curse God had
placed upon the daughters of Eve for her transgression.
King Charles of Spain declared that the digging of a canal across the
isthmus of Panama, thus severing North and South America, would be a
sin; for is it not written: “What God hath joined together let no man
put asunder”?
In America the famous Rev. Cotton Mather wrote a letter to John
Higginson informing him that the “general court” had given secret
orders to a sea captain to waylay William Penn and the one hundred
Quaker colonists--“heretics and malignants”--who were then on their
way to Pennsylvania, capture the “ungodly crew” and sell them “to
Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar,” for in so
doing “the lord may be glorified and not mocked on soil of this new
country,” closing his pious letter with the felicitous phrase, “Yours
in the bowels of Christ.”
In 1826 the school board of Lancaster, Ohio, refused to permit the
use of the schoolhouse for a debate as to whether railroads were
practicable. The letter reads: “You are welcome to the schoolhouse
to debate all proper questions in, but such things as railroads
and telephones (the possibility of which were talked then) are
impossibilities and rank infidelity; there is nothing in the Word of
God about them. If God designed that his intelligent creatures should
travel at the frightful speed of 15 miles an hour He would have clearly
foretold it through his holy prophets. It is a device of Satan to lead
immortal souls down to hell.”
Is there needed stronger proof than this of the mental slavery to which
the belief in verbal inspiration reduces its devotees?
Today those who oppose evolution for biblical reasons occupy the same
absurd position as those who persecuted Galileo, denounced Newton,
opposed the use of anesthetics in childbirth, thwarted the digging
of a Panama canal, regarded the introduction of railroads and other
industrial innovations as tricks of the devil to damn our souls, and
approved the selling into slavery of the adherents of a rival Christian
sect.
This medieval belief of verbal inspiration has filled the Christian
world with strife and intolerance, and has drenched its soil with the
blood of tens of thousands of “heretics.” It was this belief that for
hundreds of years impelled whatever sect that had the power, be it
Catholic or Protestant, to persecute, imprison, torture, burn, kill in
every conceivable way those who differed with it in the interpretation
of certain scriptural texts. This narrow, intolerant belief, the very
negation of the Christ spirit, lives today--but, thanks to modern
science and intellectual progress, its teeth are drawn.
Let us get this straight: evolution is not, in the slightest degree,
opposed to religion; but it does conflict with the noxious growths
of superstition and doctrinalism which half conceals religion. True
Christianity will shine all the brighter with its concealments cleared
away. The study of evolution broadens and enlarges one’s conception of
religion. Those who are afraid that to accept evolution would cause
them to “lose their faith” are already weak in faith.
Those who insist on, as of paramount importance, a belief in some
mystical “plan of salvation,” including certain rites to be observed,
are Paulinists rather than Christians. Scattered throughout Paul’s
writings are expressions regarding the fall of Adam, the total
depravity of man, the atoning blood of Christ, etc., which are harmless
enough if regarded simply as rhetorical flourishes, but linked up in a
finely wrought out scheme of redemption, and coupled with an insistence
on the absolute necessity of belief in the same as the only means of
individual salvation--why, this Pauline gospel has catered to human
selfishness, has filled the world with theological disputations and
sectarian strife, and has relegated into the background the great,
yet simple spiritual truths of the lowly Nazarene. As a doctrine, its
mysticism has a natural affinity with inherent superstition, dregs of
which lie at the bottom of every human soul.
It is Jesus’ persistent insistence on the duty of each to serve
humanity that made him a great religious teacher. And it is His
teachings, if we heed them, that will “save” us, and not his shed
blood; _that_ dried up within a few hours of his crucifixion. To say
that we are “saved by the blood of the lamb” is a fine figure of
speech, though a well-worn one. Of course, the martyrdom of Jesus adds
emphasis to the truths be expounded, but it makes them not one whit
truer than they were.
Will the verbal inspirationalists please tell us when God quit sending
messages to the world couched in his own words? It may be that that
kind of inspiration ceased before Paul began preaching. If so, Paul is
no greater, _as an authority_, than Whitefield or Moody.
There is no reason why we should not read the Bible just as we would
any other book, with reason enthroned.
POPULAR OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
Note.--The following objections to evolution with replies thereto are
taken from a debate which the writer and several anti-evolutionists
conducted some time ago through the columns of a popular weekly.
An opponent says: “The evolutionists are trying to rob God of the honor
of creation by substituting certain natural laws for his omnipotent
power. This world and all therein didn’t ‘just happen’; it was created
on purpose. We oppose this Darwin heresy because it conflicts with the
divinely-inspired word of God.... My opponent should be more positive
in some of his statements and not say, ‘So-and-so is the opinion of
scientists, if he would have us forsake our old beliefs and adopt
his...’. In regard to that crust of conservatism of ours which he says
is so thick and hard that the truth cannot percolate through it--I, for
one, would rather have a defensive armor so tough that lightning could
not ‘faze’ it than be so spongy as to absorb every _ism_ I came in
contact with.”
Is it a reflection upon the power, the glory, and the dignity of the
Almighty to say that the creative act was by the operation of natural
law--a slow, gradual, long-continued act--rather than a short, quick,
mechanical, or supernatural, process? Before the dawn of science even
the brightest minds, knowing little or nothing of the law of cause
and effect, could not conceive of God as performing his mighty works
save in some manlike manner. It seems that they had the idea--and a
great many still have it--that during those six days of twenty-four
hours each the Creator went about his work at his little old mud-mill,
mixing and grinding the material, and shaping and moulding it into all
sorts of animal forms on his potter wheel. It is time for the world
to rid itself of the primitive idea that man originated as a sort of
hand-made, table-turned piece of pottery.
Others say that God merely “spoke” all things into existence. If that
view be correct, then according to the rest of the Genesis story of
creation God became so tired from this lingual feat of six days’
duration that he was compelled to take a rest at the week’s end. Is
it possible that a God of infinite power and endurance should become
so weary with a week’s work, either of hand or tongue, that he would
require a rest?
There is not the slightest evidence that God ever did an hour’s work
save through natural law.
Between the scientists and the literal interpreters of the Bible the
war has been long and fierce, and has raged on many a battle front;
but so far, the scientists have won in every contest. There was once
a battle between the scientists and those who believed the earth to
be flat--for did not John, the Revelator, see four angels standing on
the four corners of the earth? The literalists were defeated. There
was once a contest between the astronomers and those who believed the
sun and moon revolved around the earth--“And he said in the sight of
all Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the
valley of Ajelon.... So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven,
and hasted not to go down about a whole day.” (Joshua, 10:12, 13).
The literalists were defeated. There was one a clash between the
geologists and those who believed the world to have been created in six
twenty-four-hour days. Again the literalists were defeated. There is
a combat between those who hold the view that all organisms including
man were created by natural laws--operating just as they do today--and
those who hold to either the potter or the vocal process of creation.
The latter--well, they occupy the same position as those did who said
the earth is flat, and that is was made between the blink o’ morn on
that great First Monday 6,000 years ago and the evening twilight the
following Saturday.
Scientists do not claim that life on this earth began by accident, or
that anything “just happens.” On the contrary, it is owing to science
that a belief in accidents and chance in the material world has been
banished from thinking minds. It is true that a great majority of the
people still believe in chance in the psychic world; such as, a certain
individual prompted by certain motives, and acting in accord with his
nature under certain conditions, did a certain thing, when the same
individual prompted by the same motives could have done otherwise--that
is to say, the same causes acting under the same conditions can produce
effects of various kinds, either good acts or bad acts. But science
will finally force the world to accept the whole truth--that mind is as
much subject to law as is matter; that the thoughts, desires, deeds of
men are shaped by law.
Scientists are trying to teach us to exercise our powers of reason,
to form our own opinions from the evidence, not passively to accept
opinions on authority. Their method is the direct opposite of that
of the orthodox theologians. The latter wish us to regard authority,
in matters of religion especially, as superior to reason. No, Mr.
Opponent, I don’t wish anyone to forsake his old belief and accept mine
on my authority--or that of anyone else. Let reason and evidence be the
only authority.
To win converts to evolution is not my only object in discussing the
subject. What is quite as important (and, frankly, to me as enjoyable)
is to make use of the opportunities the discussion affords me of
giving a sort of fifth-rib dig o’ the thumb to those complacent ones
who (judging by the manner they acquired, and still retain, their
beliefs) seem to think that the mere accident of one’s birth and
parentage in a certain time and place, thus bringing him in contact
with certain prevailing opinions, is proof that those opinions are true.
This writer is speaking largely from his own mental experience. He,
like his opponent, absorbed orthodox theology along with political
standpattism and a few other “safe and sane” _isms_ from his early
environment. My opponent, like most others, never thought of
questioning the truth of those beliefs, but left them undisturbed until
they fossilized. On the other hand some of us, perhaps because of a
radical twist in our mental make-up, set ourselves to examining those
hand-me-down beliefs and found some of them lacking in some important
essentials. Having changed sides on one or more important questions we
naturally lost faith in the more-or-less popular theory that because an
idea is old, or is held by a majority of the people, it must therefore
necessarily be true. That is the extent of this writer’s “sponginess.”
As a rule when we have learned that we have absorbed most of our
political, religious and other early opinions from our environment
through the pores of our skin we become less cock-sure we have a
monopoly on truth.
As a rule latitude and longitude instead of reason shapes our opinions
on the most important issues. We are generally Protestants, Catholics,
Mohammedans, Confucians, Monarchists, democrats or republicans,
according to whether we happened to be born and reared in Spain,
Turkey, China, Mississippi or Vermont.
An old English Philosopher says: “Men have always thought and believed
in masses. Throughout the whole earth you may observe opinions and
ideas, like swarms of bees, clustering together upon particular spots,
or as if, like certain trees and plants, they were indigenous to the
soil.” Another writer says, “Men think in packs as jackals hunt.”
A young minister exclaims: “There is a gulf between man and the
inferior animals which no amount of sophistry, alias science, can
ever bridge. There is more than a missing link--a thousand links.
Man differs from animals in mental faculties. Lower animals cannot
originate an idea.... If man was evolved from a beast, where did he get
his soul? You cannot say it evolved, too. There was a definite hour
when man, possessing an immortal spirit, walked this earth, or else man
is yet a beast.
“If the soul was slowly evolved, and if that long-tailed monkey who
squatted upon the lower branches of your ancestral tree had a piece of
a soul, and you should meet that poor little piece of a soul in the
future land of spirits, wouldn’t you be ‘sorter’ ashamed on the morning
after the Resurrection to walk up to it and say, ‘Howdy, Grandpa?’
“You may boast that your grandfather was a monkey, your
great-grandfather a bullfrog, and your great-great-grandfather a
wiggletail but I claim for mine no such illustrious ancestry.”
Well, that settles it! To save our pride--or our vanity rather--I
suppose we’ll have to shut our eyes to the evidences and reject
evolution. After all, perhaps the world’s greatest thinkers have been
following the wrong trail in the pursuit of truth; instead of weighing
the evidence for and against a theory they should have adopted the
infinitely simpler plan of deciding it according to whether or not
we like it! All anti-evolutionists find it necessary to appeal to
our pride of ancestry to hold us to an ancient dogma. Even Mr. Bryan
regards this appeal to petty personal vanity as legitimate argument
against evolution. How they hate to give up the ennobling idea that we
are the degraded descendants of a perfect, god-like pair!
Are the lower animals so very inferior to man because, as my friend
says, they cannot originate an idea? Lots of us higher animals could
plead guilty to the same charge; and, what is worse, two or three
generations must pass before the majority of us will even seriously
consider an idea some one else originated--even when all the facts are
for, and none against it.
It is not necessary to bridge every gulf between man and amoeba
to prove evolution. If all gaps between species were filled with
“links” as thick as down on a goose’s feather then all creatures from
Shakespeare to angle worms would belong to the same species. In that
case all animals would be either poets or fishbait.
I know of no reason why man evolved from a lower mammal could not
have acquired a soul just as easily as if he were fashioned directly
from a batch of mud. And I infer from that sublime paragraph of my
reverend friend’s closing with the touching salutation, “Howdy,
Grandpa,”--whoop-ee!--that his idea of heaven is that it is just about
as stagnant a place as he believes this world to be. May not poor
little stunted souls--if there are such there--be permitted to unfold
and develop in the genial environment of the realm of the blest?
My opponent seems to be perturbed in regard to the exact period in
the development of the race, “the definite hour,” when man came into
possession of a soul. To this question let us apply cold, merciless
logic. The biologic history of the human race is recapitulated in the
embryonic life of each individual. There are no difficulties in the
way of determining at what precise period the soul was injected into
the race-man that are not also met with in regard to the individual.
My reverend friend, can you point out the “definite hour”--why not
definite minute, or second?--when in your embryonic development you
became possessed of a soul? And just three seconds before that event
were you not in as woeful a plight as any soulless monkey that ever
cooled himself by swinging to and fro, suspended from a leafy bough by
means of his prehensile caudal appendage?
Is it not possible that a little bit of envy of that large-souled race
of the future does not mingle with your shame of an animal ancestry
when you rise and exclaim, “Away with the theory of the upward trend
in God’s works; I will none of it?”--for it is a fact that whatever
sense of shame one may feel for our lowly ancestors it is more than
compensated for by the pride one may feel for the noble race that is
to be; because if the path along which we have travelled in past ages
points downward in the rear, it just as surely points upward in front.
Our destiny will be as high as our origin was low. And as man drops
his foolish prejudices and grows more intelligent, as he learns more
about the laws of his development, the more rapidly will he advance
physically, mentally, spiritually.
Ah! Parson, far better to be the tadpole ancestor of an
ever-progressive angel breed than be the degraded descendant of a
race of gods; yet a race without hope of ever again reaching the
much-lauded, pristine purity and perfection of Adam--a creature really
whose moral status was so low, and who was so weak, that he fell at the
first temptation.
Civilization, culture, the moral nature of man, have been developed;
they are not the remains of something that has been lost. Human nature
is not ruined, but is unfinished. The god-like race is not of the past,
but belongs to the future. Man entered the zone of sin not from above,
but from below. Probably no man who ever walked this earth save Jesus
Christ has ever breathed the pure moral atmosphere above the zone of
sin. Through this zone, from the pre-human to the man of Galilee, from
the sinless state of the lower animals and of the child-man to the
sinless perfection of the divine, the whole race, ’mid struggles and
trials and sorrows and anguish, must pass, is passing.
NATURAL SELECTION AND FUTURE PROGRESS
Every truth man has discovered, every sound moral precept, is rooted
in Nature. She is the rough model to be followed by man if his
institutions are to endure. He goes wrong when he opposes her laws; he
is right when he is in agreement with her, refining away her crudeness.
Man creates nothing; he can only imitate, often poorly. He boasts of
his works--really they are the product of Nature working through him,
using him as an instrument.
We have seen that Nature does not hesitate to destroy the individual if
the species to which it belongs is thereby benefitted. She looks beyond
the present generation to the welfare of the race that is to be, thus
teaching us the highest morality we can know, the broadest religion,
i.e., that the good of the race, the COMMON GOOD, is all important, and
that the individual should willingly sacrifice his labor, his life,
when the good of humanity demands it. Jesus Christ, Socrates, and a
host of less known martyrs have proved their devotion to the common
good by making the supreme sacrifice. In so doing they have hewn to the
line chalked out by Mother Nature eons ago when inorganic matter first
felt the stir of life. Jesus was announcing this principle when he
said, “For whosoever will save his life”--strive for self alone--“shall
lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake”--and the sake of
humanity which Jesus himself valued higher than his own life--“shall
find it.” Though only a few will have occasion to suffer martyrdom, the
call to all of us is to live the life of unselfishness, be the end what
it may. To live for the race is just as noble, if less dramatic, as to
die for it.
Thus we find that Nature’s most vital principle is in perfect accord
with the profoundest religious truths. We have been taught that Nature
is cruel, that her hands are red with the blood of the innocent, but
this idea was born of our short-sightedness. We could not see beyond
the outward act to the underlying law and its results.
For man so to shape his life and deeds as to be in harmony with
the great law of natural selection and with the fundamental
principle of religion does not mean self-effacement, the suppression
of individuality. On the contrary, it means self-development,
individuality in the best sense. As a species or a race is composed of
individuals, the more highly developed are the individuals the greater
the species. Self-development is the growth of the individual out of
narrow selfishness and in accord with the laws of human betterment.
Selfishness expanded, refined and ennobled becomes altruism, the love
of others.
That the selfish person defeats his own ends, cheats himself, is a
truism. Only the unselfish person, holding humanity dearer than his own
self, enjoys to the fullest all that belongs to selfhood, for he alone
has the capacity for real enjoyment--or deserves it. The supremely
selfish--the criminal, the grafter, the one who seeks to profit in any
way at the expense of others--stands in the same relation to his race
as the inferior animal to its species--he pulls down the average of the
race, and is at cross purposes with Nature.
To condone in one’s self any of the many forms of selfishness, whether
it be greed, theft, lying, lust, or vanity, is to put one’s self in the
same class with those defective wild creatures which Nature ruthlessly
destroys.
When a great ethical doctrine is grounded on a scientific basis it
becomes doubly convincing. Let the whole truth in regard to each
individual’s duty to the race be taught--the scientific half of it
along with the emotional, idealistic half. No one who feels the full
force of this truth will, in order to “make a living,” take out of the
COMMON GOOD fund more than he puts into it, but less, rather. It should
be instilled into the minds of youth that the welfare of the race is
the supreme duty of each, and that the greatest individual happiness
is attained only through the self-development and self-expression of
the individual along this line. But, alas! the enlightened legislatures
of some of our sovereign states have forbid the teaching of natural
selection to children. The reason given is that it might rob them of
their religion!
The time is near when the conduct of man in every field of endeavor
will be tested by the standard of loyalty and devotion to the common
good. Certain gainful occupations injurious to the common welfare are
already gone or going. Eliminated as unfit will be the greedy parasites
that fasten themselves onto the social body on pretense of aiding some
industry to function, and who give little or nothing in return for
the public pap that fills their maws to repletion--eliminated just
as Nature eliminates the animal that would bring degeneracy to its
species. They will be forced to take up a work wherein their services
shall equal their pay. The route between the producer and the consumer
will be shortened, and the two will stand nearer on a level--as viewed
from the price of the product.
This lesson from the book of Nature we have been studying has a
universal application. Its truths are applicable in every field and
department wherein man and his activities are employed--in private
conduct, religion, government and industry.
* * * * *
Of all animals man is most subject to disease and defect in body and
in mind. Sickly, or mal-formed wild animals are so rare as seldom
to be seen. This is almost as true of domesticated animals, though
epidemics sometimes sweep them off. Animals mentally defective
are almost unknown. But man is assailed with a thousand ailments.
Defective organs, functional disorders, chronic invalidism are common.
Malformations of body, also of brain causing idiocy, stupidity,
insanity and crime, are a hundred times more frequent in man than in
lower animals, wild or domesticated. Why this difference? The answer is
easy for anyone familiar with the laws of evolution.
The sedulous sifting by natural selection of animals in the wild state
has left no sickly or half-witted degenerates to burden the world with
a like progeny. If at rare intervals the law of variation should drop a
mal-formed specimen into Nature’s sieve it would be quickly eliminated
along with the great mass of averages. Practically the same is true of
domesticated animals where the watchful eye of man is substituted for
Nature’s.
As natural selection is hampered in its operation among domesticated
animals by the interference of man, so is it limited on the human
plane. There, we find virtually no selection, neither natural nor
artificial. Hence the degeneracy--physical, mental, moral. Both Nature
and man, in their respective fields of operation, select only a few
of the best for propagating purposes--Nature eliminating the rest by
death, and man by sterilization. But on the human plane man--acting
mercifully toward the individual, mercilessly toward the race--does
his best to thwart Nature. He prolongs the lives of weaklings, of the
maimed-from-birth, of the deaf and dumb and blind, and of the mentally
sub-normal. So far, all is well. But he permits these victims of an
inferior ancestry to marry and procreate almost without limit. What
then can we expect but for the world to be burdened with invalids,
runts, and the mal-formed--cursed with morons, sub-morons, half-wits,
quarter-wits, and predestined criminals? And worse for the entire race,
this class shades upward by imperceptible degrees into all gradations,
mingling its inferior strains with the best. It has always been so;
therefore all of us, far more than wild animals, have a mixed ancestry,
of the good and the less good.
Why is it that man has not learned to rid himself of this lower fringe
of degeneracy as is done in the case of every other species of animal?
It is mainly because the superstition of an out-worn theology has so
muddled his brains that he has been unable to see that the laws of
Nature are as applicable to himself as to all other creatures. He has
always fancied himself as occupying a higher plane than that on which
Nature has her laboratory. So he has always depended on “divine” laws,
not those of “carnal nature,” to plant his feet on higher ground. And
we see the result. Notwithstanding his high intellectual and moral
faculties, as a race, he is the most defective animal on earth. What is
the remedy?
If we would solve this pressing problem we must apply the laws of
Nature to man in some such manner as they have always applied to
the rest of the animal kingdom. The unfit must be prevented from
reproducing its kind. How? There are only two methods: Nature’s, by
bringing about the death of the unfit prospective parent, and man’s,
the sterilization method. But among the better traits of man which
have been slowly evolved in his agelong struggle reaching back to
an immemorial past is sympathy, mercy. This bars him from using
Nature’s method of preventing undesirable offspring; nor can he use the
sterilization method except in extreme cases. Born criminals, perverts,
and other abnormal misfits who persist in indulging their selfish
passions in detriment of the Common Good--for such, comprising perhaps
5 to 10 per cent of the race, sterilization is the quickest and surest
preventive. Once the milder type of defectives are made to realize the
heinous crime of bringing degenerate children into the world they would
in most cases refrain from marriage and procreation. Wise restrictive
laws and an awakened public opinion would do the rest. This eugenical
system is the only one that promises hope for the salvation of the
race. From generation to generation, owing to the fecundity of the less
fit and their proneness to “let Nature take her course,” their numbers
increase, and so, too, the danger increases of their swamping the
fitter.
* * * * *
From the exposition of natural selection it will be seen that all
the laws of organic development--either of individuals, varieties
or species--fall under two heads: those of heredity (the harking
back to ancestral characters) and those of environment (all outside
influences). Variation, which seems so contradictory of the law of
“like producing like,” is in reality a result of heredity. Offspring
inherit traits, more or less repressive in one or both parents, in
different degrees--this is variation.
The gist of the matter is: heredity transmits to environment the
ancestral traits or characters, good and bad, of each creature. From
these inherited traits environmental laws select and nourish those best
fitted to each particular environment, and neglect, repress or destroy
the less fit. At the birth of the individual heredity has done its
work, for good or ill; then environment receives the legacy bequeathed
by its ancestry and completes the job--whether for the individual’s
weal or woe depends both upon the quality of the material heredity
handed down, and upon the character of the particular environment that
works upon the material. As prior to birth heredity is the only factor
in producing the individual, the absolute necessity of preventing
the reproduction of the unfit, the inferior, becomes apparent; as
after birth environment is the only factor, or sum of factors, in his
production, the making the best possible environment for every one is
the one absolute essential.
The individual man, no less than other organisms, is a creature of
heredity and environment. This is as true of his intellect and of his
moral character as of his body. He is not a thing separate and apart,
but a link in the chain of cause and effect. He is orbit-bound as
planets are. Every thought of his brain, every desire of his heart,
every deed of his hand is a natural and (circumstances considered)
unavoidable result of the laws of Nature working in and through
him--as surely as every cause produces an effect and that every cause
is itself an effect of a prior cause. In cases where opposing forces
or influences tend to move the will in different directions it obeys
the stronger--follows the path of least resistance. It cannot do
otherwise--no more than Newton’s apple could have moved toward the moon.
Scientists are generally agreed that none but “inborn” traits, the
inherited ones, are transmissible to posterity--though Dr. Krammerer
has recently furnished some evidence to the contrary. If the
generally accepted view be the true one, then of course “acquired”
characters--the “improvements” of environment--die with the individual.
Certainly, environment cannot put into the individual what it had no
capacity for at birth; it can only develop what is already there. Hence
the conclusion: We may, we must, improve the environment for the good
of the living generations as they arise; but above all, prevent the
reproduction of the unfit for the incalculable benefit of the countless
generations that are now waiting their turn in the womb of the future.
* * * * *
Man is such an egotistical creature--being a near relative of the
gods, as he imagined, and being specially created and made lord over
the other creatures--that he has always regarded himself as above and
beyond Nature and not subject to her laws, or only so far as his body
was concerned--that being the one link connecting him with Nature.
As the little boy evolved from his inner consciousness his idea of
the camel, of which he had never seen even a picture, so man in olden
times evolved his theories of the origin of the world and of himself,
and the part he was to play in life. According to his primitive
way of thinking, the earth--which he regarded as the center of the
universe--was a very small affair, over which Nature presided as a sort
of satrap whose rulership was subject to interference at any time by
the Great King. According to his theory there were two sets of laws,
natural and divine, and they were often in conflict with each other.
But man always had the right to appeal his case to the higher authority
when not satisfied with Nature’s rulings. She had neither part nor
jurisdiction in the human mind or soul--that coming not by way of her
but directly from God.
This was essentially the belief of millions for thousands of years, and
it is the belief of millions today. This is the soil in which nearly
all the creeds of today are rooted.
The old theologians made a distinction between God’s works and Nature’s
works, divine laws and natural laws. It is because of this dual idea of
God and Nature that the most fruitful scientific discovery of all time
is barred from the schools in some states and denounced as “atheism”
from many a pulpit. Those who hold to the old theology do not realize
how completely science has destroyed the foundations of their ancient
belief, nor have they any conception of what an incalculable service
modern thought has been to religion in clearing it of its impediments.
The bringing of science and reason to play in the progress of man, the
bringing of the blind forces of Nature more and more under subjection
to his enlightened intelligence--this is but Nature exalting herself.
Having built up a higher plane, the human plane, Nature works upon that
to refine and ennoble herself--not purposely, or only so far as man
works with a purpose. All, all is Nature.
Transcriber’s note:
Obvious printing errors, such as partially printed letters and
punctuation, were corrected. Full stops missing at the end of sentences
and abbreviations were added.
Spelling in common use at the time of publishing, such as “aligator”
and “agelong”, has been kept as is. Obvious typos have been corrected.
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