March 10, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



265 



cient intelligence to fashion many different 

 kinds of implements, to make a fire, to make 

 flint tools whieh may kave been used for the 

 dressing of hides as clothing, constitutes the 

 most convincing answer to Mr. Bryan's call for 

 more evidence. It once more reminds us of the 

 ignorance of man of the processes of Nature, 

 and sets a new boundary beyond which digging 

 in the earth for more of truth must be directed. 

 This Foxhall man, found near Ipswich, Eng- 

 land, thus far known only by the flint imple- 

 ments he made and his fli'e, is the last bit of 

 evidence in the direction of giving man a 

 descent line of his own far back in geologic 

 time. It tends to remove man still further 

 from the great lines which led to the man apes, 

 the chimpanzee, the orang, the gorilla and the 

 gibbon. This is not guess work, this is a fact. 

 It is another truth which we shall have to 

 accept regardless of its effect. No naturalist 

 has ever ventured to place man so far back in 

 geologic time as this actual discovery of the 

 Foxhall man places him. In this instance 

 again truth is stranger than hypothesis or 

 speculation. 



Nearer to us is the Piltdown man, found not 

 far from 75 miles to the southwest of Ipswich, 

 England; still nearer in geologic time is the 

 Heidelberg man, found on the Neckar River; 

 still nearer is the Neanderthal man, whom we 

 now know all about — his frame, his head form, 

 his industries, his ceremonial burial of the 

 dead, also evidence of his belief in a future 

 existence; nearer still is the Cro-Magnon man, 

 who lived about 30,000 years ago, our equal if 

 not our superior in intelligence. This chain of 

 human ancestors was totally unknown to Dar- 

 win. He could not have even dreamed of such 

 a flood of proof and truth. It is a dramatic 

 circumstance that Darwin had within his reach 

 the head of the Neanderthal man without real- 

 izing that it constituted the "missing link" Ise- 

 tween man and the lower order of creation. All 

 this evidence is to-day within reach of every 

 schoolboy. It is at the service of Mr. Bryan. 

 It wiU, we are convinced, satisfactorily answer 

 in the negative his question : "Is it not more 

 rational to believe in the creation of man by 

 separate act of God than to believe in evolu- 

 tion without a particle of evidence?" 



Henry Eairfield Osboen 



Is it any more degrading to hold that man 

 was made through a long line of animal an- 

 cestry than to believe that he was made directly 

 from the dust? Surely the horse and the dog 

 and the monkey belong to higher orders of ex- 

 istence than do the clod and the stone. Whether 

 we accept the teachings of evolution or the 

 most literal interpretation of the Biblical ac- 

 count we are compelled to recognize the fact 

 that our bodily origin has been a humble one; 

 as Sir Charles Lyell once said, "It is mud or 

 monkey." But this lowly origin does not 

 destroy the dignity of man; his real dignity 

 consists not in his origin but in what he is and 

 in what he may become. 



If only the theological opponents of evolu- 

 tion could learn anything from past attempts 

 to confute science by the Bible they would be 

 more cautious. It was once believed univer- 

 sally that the earth was flat and that it was 

 roofed over by a solid "firmament," and when 

 scientific evidence was adduced to show that 

 the earth was a sphere and that the "firma- 

 ment" was not a solid roof, it was denounced 

 as opposed to the Scriptures. Those who 

 have visited the Columbian Library in the 

 Cathedi-al of Seville will recall the Bible of 

 Columbus with marginal notes in his own 

 handwriting to prove that the sphericity of 

 the earth was not opposed to the Scriptures, 

 and a treatise written by him while in prison 

 to pacify the Inquisition. To-day only Voliva 

 and his followers at Zion City maintain that 

 the earth is flat, and the heavens a solid dome, 

 because this is apparently taught by the 

 Scriptures. 



The central position of the earth in the uni- 

 verse with all heavenly bodies revolving around 

 it was held to be as certain as holy writ. All 

 the world knows the story of "Starry Galileo 

 and His Woes" at the hands of the Inquisition, 

 but the Copernican theory was opposed not 

 only by the Roman Catholic Church, but also 

 by the leaders of the Reformation. Martin 

 Luther denounced it as "the work of a fool"; 

 Melanchthon declared that it was neither hon- 

 est nor decent to teach this pernicious doctrine, 

 and that it should be repressed by severe 

 measures, and John Wesley declared that it 

 "tended toward infidelity." Even as late as 

 1724 the Newtonian theory of gravitv was 



