DARWIN 



ing the force which causes the enormous number of 

 gemmules to flow to the organs of reproduction and 

 there arrange themselves so that each of the vast num- 

 ber of ova and sperms shall be a miniature of a pos- 

 sible offspring; again, not to mention other insuper- 

 able difficulties, if a child, for example, should lose a 

 finger or any other part of the body at birth would 

 not that mutilation necessarily be transmitted, since 

 it would be difficult to see how the loss of the finger 

 would not also include final loss of finger cells and 

 gemmules of the finger cells? The whole idea is so pre- 

 posterous that it ought not to be discussed at all and 

 yet, at the time, the evolutionists were so certain that 

 they were the repository of truth and that they mere- 

 ly had to persevere in order to give a mechanistic 

 theory of life, that the eminent physicist, Maxwell, 

 calculated the number of probable material atoms in 

 a gemmule to show their variety of combinations 

 could not account for the structure and complex char- 

 acteristics of man. No other evidence is necessary to 

 show that when Darwin left the field of observation 

 and entered the more difficult region of speculation 

 he showed a pitiful inability to grasp the problem, to 

 see even its absurdities, or to foresee its conclusions. 

 It is almost incomprehensible that the world, and 

 particularly the biologist, has not taken into account 

 this inherent inability of Darwin to think on abstract 

 questions and is still willing, because he was a genius 

 in one field, to follow him as a guide in all fields. 



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