What Is a Fish? ii 



whole history of organic evolution. And while the teleologi- 

 cal point of view at first seems logical and pleasing, it has 

 one great weakness: the inheritance of acquired characters, 

 the corner-stone on which it rests, has never yet been proved 

 possible. From time to time one scientist or another will 

 almost persuade himself that he has found a clue which 

 leads in that direction; but in spite of much research, not 

 one undebatable case of such inheritance, either in the past 

 or the present, has been brought to light. Human beings 

 are occasionally born with extra vertebrae in their necks. If 

 conditions of life were to become such that long necks were 

 a distinct advantage to humans, those individuals would 

 have a chance to dominate the scene, and might eventually 

 produce a race of human giraffes; but no amount of effort 

 in the line of mechanically stretching mothers' necks could 

 add even one vertebral section to a baby's neck. 



And yet in spite of all the evidence on their side — the fossil 

 records, the experiments, the observation of natural processes 

 — the mutationists themselves seem to have difficulty in be- 

 lieving that they are entirely right, for they frequently slip 

 into a teleological way of speaking. The temptation to see 

 a purpose in evolution is almost irresistible. 



From the very first, anti-evolutionists have revolted at the 

 suggestion that men were the descendants of monkeys. To 

 a much more important aspect of the theory, that men are 

 descended from fish, they have never objected. Perhaps to 

 be called the great-great-great-etcetera-grandson of a stur- 

 geon is so grotesque as to be beneath notice, whereas to be 

 called the grandson of a gorilla is too close for comfort. The 

 fact of the matter is that many experts believe, not that 

 man descends from monkeys, but that both man and monkey 

 descend from a remote, now extinct, common ancestor. 



To emphasize this point for the benefit of the anti- 

 simians, evolutionists have sometimes stated that no living 



