EVOLUTION THE RESULT OF CHEMICAL FORCES. Ill 



the other fingers as in the human hand. In man there is a 

 complete change in the bones and muscles of the foot, so that 

 the power of opposability of the large toe is entirely lost, and 

 the same is the case in the most ancient races that we know any- 

 thing of. The structure of the organs of the voice in man is on 

 a superior type to that of the apes; yet it is as perfect in the 

 lowest savages as in the most cultured races of mankind. In the 

 perfection of the human hand, its entire freedom from all loco- 

 motive uses, in man's erect form and the adaptation of feet and 

 limbs to that position, in his naked and sensitive skin, demanding 

 clothes and houses, and finally in all distinctly human peculiari- 

 ties, man does not approach sensibly nearer the ape-condition 

 even in the lowest or most primeval state in which he has ever 

 been found. There are not only no intermediate forms between 

 man and the anthropoid apes, but there is really no approxima- 

 tion to any relationship to them as we follow back the line of 

 his descent. 



The great cry of modern evolutionists is for " lost links " the 

 great complaint is, " the imperfection of the geological record." 

 They find all the connecting links they want between species and 

 perhaps nearly allied genera. But when it comes to intermediate 

 forms between orders, families, and most genera, the findings 

 have been in the highest degree unsatisfactory. Where in fact 

 the most should have been found, there is really found the least 

 or rather none at all. Intermediate forms, according to slow and 

 gradual evolution, should have had as long and as prolific an 

 existence as any others. Therefore the fact that they are not 

 found in the geological strata, is the best of evidence that they 

 never existed. 



If now, after presenting the outline of the facts and reason- 

 ings which have led me to dissent from the promulgated doctrines 

 of evolution, I might be permitted to indulge in a little exercise 

 of the scientific imagination, I would say that all the facts and 

 principles of the growth of life-forms would be readily explained 

 under the hypothesis that every addition to the combining num- 

 bers of the molecules of germinal matter would necessarily pro- 

 duce higher and advancing orders of organisms. The great 



