FOSSIL PEDIGREES 67 



be extremely persuasive, provided, of course, it proceeds in 

 rigorous accord with indubitably established facts and rules 

 out relentlessly the alloy of uncritical assumptions. 



Here, likewise, we find the theory of transformism asserting 

 its superiority over the theory of immutability, on the ground 

 that evolutionism can furnish a natural explanation for the 

 gradational distribution of fossil types in the geological strata, 

 whereas the theory of permanence resorts, it is said, to a 

 supernaturalism of reiterated "new creations" alternating with 

 "catastrophic exterminations." Now, if this claim is valid, and 

 it can be shown conclusively that fixism is inevitably com- 

 mitted to a postulate of superfluously numerous "creations," 

 then the latter theory is shorn of all right to consideration 

 by Occam's Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine ratione. 

 It is rather difficult to conceive of the Creator as continually 

 blotting out, and rewriting, the history of creation, as ruth- 

 lessly exterminating the organisms of one age, only to repopu- 

 late the earth subsequently with species differing but little 

 from their extinct predecessors — ad quid perditio haecf Such 

 procedure hardly comports with the continuity, regularity and 

 irrevisable perfection to be expected in the works of that 

 Divine Wisdom, which "reacheth . . . from end to end might- 

 ily and disposeth all things sweetly" {Wisdom, viii; 1), which 

 "ordereth all things in measure, and number and weight." 

 (Wis. xi; 21.) 



Following the lead of other evolutionists, Wasmann has 

 striven to saddle fixism with the fatuity of periodic catas- 

 trophism and "creation on the installment plan." But even 

 Cuvier, who is credited with having originated the theory of 

 catastrophism, did not go to the absurd extreme of hypothe- 

 cating reiterated creations, but sought to explain the repopu- 

 lation of the earth after each catastrophe by means of 

 migrations from distant regions unaffected by the catastrophe. 

 Historically, too, fixism has had its uniformitarian, as well as 

 its catastrophic, versions. In fact, Huxley classifies both uni- 

 formitarianism and catastrophism as fixistic systems, when 



