THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



essary from palaeontology that complexity generally 

 ends in weakness and extinction. Biology certainly 

 with its axiom of the struggle for existence does not 

 even foster the idea of permanence. On the side of 

 physics, the Evolutionist makes progress the adapta- 

 tion of the organism to its environment, but what the 

 future of our environment is to be is a question which 

 it is impossible even to guess. 



In spite of all the resources of our machinery and 

 of our financial system not more than five or ten per 

 cent of the population in the most advanced com- 

 munities can, or will, accumulate enough in their 

 active years to support themselves When old age ap- 

 proaches. Of the millions, who use mechanical ap- 

 pliances for almost all their daily needs, only a very 

 few have any knowledge of the machines, their con- 

 struction, or their scientific principles. Before a scien- 

 tific apparatus can be transformed into a machine it 

 must be changed into one significantly known as 

 "fool-proof." It is no exaggeration to say that if a 

 few thousands of superior men were eliminated for 

 two or three generations, or if the incentive for the 

 rewards of invention were abolished as the socialists 

 advocate, our industrial and mechanical civilization 

 would crumble like a dream; the common intellect 

 during that time, unguided by the specialist, could 

 neither create new machines nor renew the old ones. 

 The vast difference between operating a machine and 

 adjusting it when some part goes wrong or creating a 



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