350 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION 



As an empirical rule, the principle of the minimum is, no 

 doubt, essential to the scientific method. To erect it into a 

 metaphysical axiom, however, is preposterous; for simple ex- 

 planations are not necessarily true explanations. In the role 

 of aprioristic metaphysics, the principle of continuity is de- 

 structive, and tends to plane down everything to the dead level 

 of materialistic monism. For those who transcendentalize it, 

 it becomes the principle "that everything is 'nothing but' some- 

 thing else, probably inferior to it." (Santayana.) To assert 

 continuity, they are driven to deny, or, at least, to leave un- 

 explained and inexplicable, the obvious novelty that emerges 

 at each higher level of the cosmic scale. And thus it comes 

 to pass that intelligence is pronounced to be nothing but sense, 

 and sense to be nothing but physiology, and physiology to be 

 nothing but chemistry, and chemistry to be nothing but me- 

 chanics, until this philosophical nihilism weeps at last for 

 want of further opportunities of devastation. Its exponents 

 have an intense horror for abrupt transitions, and resent the 

 discovery of anything that defies resolution into terms of 

 mass and motion. 



Evolution smooths the path for monism of this type by trans- 

 forming nature's staircase into an inclined plane of impercepti- 

 ble ascent. Hence Dewey refers to evolution as a ''clinching 

 proof" of the continuity hypothecated by the monist. For the 

 latter, there is no hierarchy of values, and all essential dis- 

 tinctions are abolished; for him nothing is unique and every- 

 thing is equally important. He afiirms the democracy of facts 

 and is blind to all perspective in nature. He is, in short, the 

 enemy of all beauty, all spirituality, all culture, all morality, 

 and all religion. He substitutes neurons for the soul, and 

 enthrones Natural Selection in the place of the Creator. He 

 sets up, in a word, the ideal of "an animalistic man and a 

 mechanistic universe," and offers us evolution as a demon- 

 stration of this "ideal." 



Vernon Kellogg objects to our indictment. "The evolu- 

 tionist," he says, "does not like being called a bad man. He 



