CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



do change in this way. Just such an objection might be 

 raised by one who paid a short visit to this planet and was 

 assured that children became men and women. "I have 

 been here for a whole week," the visitor might well say, "and 

 I have looked everywhere for this transformation, but I have 

 never seen a child turn into a man or woman." But a week 

 is a far greater part of the period of human growth than is 

 the time of human observation in the life of a species. 

 Furthermore, if the visitor prolonged his stay indefinitely he 

 would still never see a child "turn into" a man or woman, 

 for between the two intervenes a growth so gradual that no 

 difference is perceptible from day to day or from week to 

 week. So is it with evolution. One species does not "turn 

 into" another: it becomes another species through a series 

 of gradual changes, and at no time would it be possible to 

 say^ — ^'Noiv the change has come; what was species A yes- 

 terday is species B to-day." 



To prove that species A, known to us only from remains 

 in the rocks, had become species B of to-day it would be nec- 

 essary to restore to life the animals of innumerable past gen- 

 erations of beings and to show that, whereas those of adja- 

 cent strata could interbreed, their ancestors (species A) could 

 not interbreed and produce fertile offspring with their living 

 successors (species B). As this is manifestly impos- 

 sible, we infer from the gradual changes of form or 

 structure preserved in the rocks that A is a different 

 species from B, which has apparently sprung from A by 

 direct descent. 



If, however, we cannot witness the transformation of one 

 species into another any more than we can witness the 

 sudden transformation of a child into a man or woman, 

 we are able to witness the results of a series of changes in 

 living forms in adaptation to the conditions of life — 



[178] 



