70 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



the hypothesis, that organisms are consanguineous notwith- 

 standing their differences, loses all value as a solution at the 

 point where resemblances are outweighed by diversities. The 

 transmutation assumed to have taken place must be never 

 so complete as to have obliterated all recognizable vestiges 

 of the common ancestral type. "Whenever," says Driesch, 

 "the theory that, in spite of their diversities, the organisms 

 are related by blood, is to be really useful for explanation, it 

 must necessarily be assumed in every case that the steps of 

 change, which have led the specific form A to become the 

 specific form B, have been such as only to change in part that 

 original form A. That is to say: the similarities between A 

 and B must never be overshadowed by their diversities." 

 ("Science and Philosophy of the Organism," v. I, p. 254.) 

 When, therefore, the reverse is true and diversities are preva- 

 lent over uniformities, we are left without clue or compass in 

 the midst of a labyrinth of innumerable possibilities. Such are 

 the limits imposed by the very nature of the evidence itself, 

 and the scientists, who transgress these limits, by attempting to 

 correlate the primary phyla, are on a par with those uncon- 

 vincible geniuses, who continually besiege the Patent Office 

 with schemes ever new and weird for realizing the chimera of 

 "perpetual motion." 



Thus scientific transformism is unable to simplify the prob- 

 lem beyond a certain irreducible plurality of forms, lesser 

 only in degree than the plurality postulated by fixism. This 

 being the case, the attempts of Wasmann and Dorlodot to 

 prune the works of Creation with Occam's Razor are not only 

 presumptuous, but precarious as well. Qui nimis prohat, nihil 

 probat! If it be unworthy of God to multiply organic origins 

 in space, then monophyletic descent is the only possible alter- 

 native, and polyphyletic transformism falls under the same 

 condemnation as fixism. Yet the polyphyletic theory of 

 descent is that to which both Wasmann and Dorlodot sub- 

 scribe, as it is, likewise, the only kind of transformism which 

 science can ever hope to plausibleize. Besides, too close a 



