66 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 993 



presumably even more convincing " motifs tres 

 graves " that the theologians and philosophers 

 have for disproving the hypothesis of the evo- 

 lutionists. 



These objections to evolution, " drawn exclu- 

 sively from the domain of science," are as 

 follows (quoted unabridged and unmutilated) : 



" 1. The great objection that can be made, 

 a priori, to evolution, and one which should 

 make unnecessary all discussion, is that it is 

 impossible to cite in its favor a single fact, 

 well determined and legitimately interpreted, 

 which shows that a single species has certainly 

 evolved into another species. It is evident that 

 a single fact of this kind would be sufficient, 

 if not to establish solidly the hypothesis of evo- 

 lution, at least to break much of the force and 

 worth of the arguments of the adversaries of 

 the hypothesis. 



" 2. As regards man himself, one has gone 

 so far as to attribute to him for ancestor, the 

 monkey, which by successive betterments 

 should have finally become the human crea- 

 ture. Only, one can give no proof of this 

 transformation; one knows none of the inter- 

 mediate beings which should have formed an 

 uninterrupted series between the monkey and 

 man. Let us add that whether we consider the 

 cranial development, or the anatomical struc- 

 ture, there are very great differences between 

 man and even the most jjerfectly constituted 

 monkey. It is the intellectual faculties, above 

 all, which offer no ground of comparison be- 

 tween man and monkeys. It is necessary then 

 to admit, from the scientific point of view, the 

 direct creation of man by God. 



" 3. Just as the human being has remained 

 the same from the beginning, so also have the 

 animal and plant kinds remained the same, 

 as proved by the study of fossils of all the 

 geological epochs. There is not the least proof 

 that a single species can, in however long a 

 time, become another species. There have 

 been, without doubt, both with man and with 

 animals and plants, changes due to climate, 

 nutrition, the soil, etc.; these changes have 

 given rise to varieties more or less stable, 

 within the species, but never to new species. 

 The trilobites, for example, whose history can 



be followed in the geological strata up to their 

 very end, since they did not persist beyond the 

 Tertiary epoch, have offered in only a dozen 

 of their three or four hundred species, no more 

 than slight variations, which were not even 

 completely maintained by their descendants. 



" Evolution, understood in a very restricted 

 sense, can then show us new varieties that only 

 culture or other causes can produce; but there 

 its power ceases, as experiment has demon- 

 strated. 



" 4. Paleontology testifies that species have 

 not appeared, from the beginning, as a series 

 of successive, ever better stages, but they have 

 appeared suddenly and without relation to the 

 species existing before. And they have ap- 

 peared all at once in all their relative jwrfec- 

 tion. 



" 5. If evolution had, as it is claimed, pro- 

 duced the perfecting of species, the last come 

 among organisms would be the most perfect. 

 Now, the study of fossils proves that the con- 

 trary is often true. For example, the most 

 ancient fishes, the first sea-urchins, the oldest 

 plants, the Carboniferous amphibia, were more 

 perfect than the fishes, sea-urchins, amphibia 

 and plants of to-day. 



" 6. It is not superfluous to add to what has 

 preceded that since the beginning of historic 

 time there has been recorded no sign of the 

 passing of one species into another, neither 

 among the plants nor animals. 



" The conclusions to draw from all this are : 

 (1) that the fixity of species is a scientific 

 truth clearly and solidly established; (2) that 

 God himself, author of all that exists outside 

 of himself, has directly created man and all 

 the animal and plant species." 



To add anything to this is to produce the 

 anti-climax. Yet it must be noted that Abbe 

 Huard's text-book has not gone wholly without 

 criticism in French Canada. In Le Pays, of 

 Montreal, a writer took some exception to the 

 Abbe's position on evolution. Le Pays was rep- 

 rimanded by the Archbishops of Montreal and 

 Quebec and the reading of the journal inter- 

 dicted. In Le Naturaliste Canadien (October, 

 1913) (his own paper) the Abbe Huard refers 

 appreciatively to the incident, and mentions 



