26 Darwinism 



Judging this statement from the purely scientific 

 standpoint, one is warranted in describing it as most 

 unwarrantable. It is one thing to say the skeleton of 

 the anthropoids and man closely resemble one another 

 and suggest to the mind the possibility that the one 

 might have been evolved from the other, but to boldly 

 postulate a common ancestor, without a single trans- 

 mission form, where the variations from the one to the 

 other must have been innumerable, and continued 

 through long ages, shows an assurance which, with 

 all due deference, we are entitled to consider proceeds 

 more from a desire to bolster up a theory sadly lacking 

 support from the observed phenomena of nature than 

 from belief in the evidence. Further, we are entitled 

 to state that observations of this kind eventually do 

 no good in supporting prevailing creeds, and in the 

 long run bring discredit upon the work of those whose 

 aim is to extend the province and beneficence of 

 science. 



Dealing with this point, Huxley writes (" Man's 

 Place in Nature ") : " The granting of the polygenetic 

 premises does not in the slightest degree necessitate 

 the polygenetic conclusion. Admit that the negroes, 

 the Australians, the Negritos, and the Mongols are 

 distinctive species or genera, and you may yet with 

 perfect consistency be the strictest of monogenists and 

 even believe in Adam and Eve as the primeval parents 

 of all mankind," and adds : " it is to Mr. Darwin we 

 owe this discovery." This we can accept in so far as 

 it admits that all races of mankind have probably 

 come from one common stock. But we can get no 

 further back than the ancestral stock of "genus homo 

 sapiens." There is no geological evidence of transition 

 forms, which must be demonstrated before we can 

 accept the evolution of man from the anthropoids. 

 If there is no such demonstration of a past evolution, 



