50 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



similarity and diversity are harmoniously reconciled, in the 

 sense that they affect, respectively, different structural, or 

 different developmental, levels. It is futile, therefore, to look 

 for contradictions where they do not exist. In a word, the 

 attempt to create opposition between a group of basic and 

 correlated uniformities, on the one hand, and some particular 

 external difference, on the other, is not only abortive, but 

 absolutely irrelevant as well. The reason is obvious. Only 

 when likeness is associated with unlikeness is it an argument 

 for Transmutation. Likeness alone would demonstrate Immu- 

 tability by indicating a process of pure inheritance as dis- 

 tinguished from the process of variation. Hence evolutionists 

 do not merely concede the coexistence of diversity with simi- 

 larity, they gladly welcome this fact as vitally necessary to 

 their contention. 



Now it is precisely this point which Mr. McCann, like many 

 other critics of evolution, fails utterly to apprehend. Con- 

 sequently, his efforts to extricate the human foot from the 

 toils of simian homology are entirely unavailing. To offset 

 the force of the argument in question, it is by no means 

 sufficient, as he apparently imagines, to point to the fact that, 

 unlike the hallux of the ape, the great toe in man is non- 

 opposable (cf. "God — or Gorilla," pp. 183, 184, and legends 

 under cuts opposite pp. 184 and 318). The evolutionist will 

 reply at once that the non-opposability of man's great toe is cor- 

 related with the specialization of the human foot for progres- 

 sion only, as distinguished from prehension; while, in the ape, 

 whose foot has retained both the progressive and the prehensile 

 function, the hallux is naturally opposable in adaptation to the 

 animal's arboreal habits. He will then call attention to the 

 undeniable fact that, despite these adaptational differences, 

 the bones in the foot of a Troglodyte ape are, bone for bone, 

 the counterparts of the bones in the human foot and not 

 of those in the human hand. He will readily concede, that, 

 so far as function and adaptedness go, this simian foot is a 

 "hand," but he will not fail to point out that it is, at the 



