162 



THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 



If a whale, for instance, opens its enormous jaws 

 and swallows thousands of small crabs, small fish, algae, 

 etc., are then the ' fittest ' in any way spared ? If 

 a pig seeks acorns, are the ( fittest ' spared ? etc., etc. 



(e) Darwinism has not withstood the proof of palceon- 

 tology. 



The classes and families are at least, as wholes, 

 found thereby to be precisely so separated and, in 

 conjunction, forming systems as they do to-day. The 

 mixture of adapted and less adapted forms has not 

 been found to exist. 1 The changes by convergence and 

 specialization cannot be comprehended by the mere 

 accumulation of the most minute changes without 

 plan and guidance. 2 



[The words { specialization ' i.e. change in a deter- 

 minate direction and ' convergence ' likewise imply 

 this.] 



We refrain from further refutation owing to the 

 impossibility that definite characters, arising by pure 

 chance, could long maintain themselves against the 

 free crossing in nature of the denial of an intervention 

 of the Creator both in connection with the origin of 



1 On the Darwinian basis it is entirely incomprehensible that such a 

 thing as a system of organisms, constructed of complex and less complex 

 constituents, can exist ! According to the Darwinian doctrine there 

 could only be amoebae : and yet the system is not yet chaotic as it must 

 be at least if the chance theory be accepted but is really a ' system ' 

 (H. Driesch, Philosophic des Organischen, I, p. 268). 



2 Deperet-Wegner : Die Umbildung der Tierwelt, p. 38. ' Do I go 

 too far if I conclude therefrom [i.e. from the discussion on Darwinism] 

 that, at least palseontologically, the question of the origin of species in 

 their full extension remains unsolved ? ' See also Steinmann : Die 

 geologischen Grundlagen der Abstammungslehre, Preface. 



