32 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



to the flaws of that "Darwinism" which he praises. Had he 

 been content with a simple demarcation of negative limits, 

 there would be no ground for complaint. But, when he goes 

 so far as to bestow unmerited praise upon the author of the 

 mechanistic "Origin of Species" and the materialistic "Descent 

 of Man"; when, by confounding Darwinism with evolution, he 

 consents to that historical injustice which allows Darwin to 

 play Jacob to Lamarck's Esau, and which leaves the original 

 genius of Mendel in obscurity while it accords the limelight of 

 fame to the unoriginal expounder of a borrowed conception; 

 when, by means of the sophistry of anachronism, he speciously 

 endeavors to bring the speculations of an Augustine or an 

 Aquinas into alignment with those of the ex-divinity student 

 of Cambridge; when he assumes that Fixism is so evi- 

 dently wrong that its claims are unworthy of consideration, 

 whereas Transformism is so evidently right that we can dis- 

 pense with the formality of examining its credentials; when, 

 in a word, he expresses himself not merely in the sense, but in 

 the very stereotyped cant phrases of a dead philosophy, we 

 realize, with regret, that his conclusions are based, not on any 

 reasoned analysis of the evidence, but solely upon the dogma- 

 tism of scientific orthodoxy, that his thought is cast in anti- 

 quated molds, and that for him, apparently, the sixty-five 

 years of discovery and disillusionment, which have intervened 

 since the publication of the "Origin of Species," have passed 

 in vain. 



But, if Dorlodot represents the extreme of uncritical ap- 

 proval, Mr. McCann represents the opposite, and no less repre- 

 hensible, extreme of biased antagonism, that is neither fair in 

 method nor conciliatory in tone. Instead of adhering to the 

 time-honored practice of Catholic controversialists, which is 

 rather to overstate than to understate the argument of an ad- 

 versary, Mr. McCann tends, at times, to minimize, in his 

 restatement, the force of an opponent's reasoning. He fre- 

 quently belittles with mere flippant sneer, and is only too ready 

 to question the good faith of those who do not share his con- 



