174 



W. HOSTE, B.A., ON FETICHISM — 



isolation and degradation it should contain any. Of course the 

 negro comes originally from the same stock as ourselves, even 

 the most unabashed evolutionist only stands for one original pair 

 of the genus homo, and there is not the slightest proof that this 

 pair were ignorant savages. When I wrote " threadbare hypothesis," 

 p. 152, I referred to Darwin's explanation of evolution— natural 

 selection. The late Lord Salisbury, in his famous address at Oxford 

 in 1894, after tenderly " cremating " this theory, ended up the 

 funeral oration by an appeal to Lord Kelvin, whose words, spoken 

 in 1874, he quoted : " I have always felt that the hypothesis of 

 natural selection does not contain the true theory of evolution, 

 if evolution there has been in biology " (my italics). Lord Kelvin, 

 who was present, found nothing to modify in this statement after 

 twenty years of further thought and experience, and in proposing 

 a vote of thanks to Lord Salisbury, only emphasized his words. 

 We do well to remember that "if," and refuse to allow ourselves 

 to be imposed upon by what is still an unproved hypothesis, with 

 enormous difficulties to overcome and chasms to bridge, before it 

 can be accepted as scientific fact. 



I lately came across an extract from Professor Lionel Beale, 

 of King's College, London, a sufficient authority on biology : 

 " There is no evidence that man descended from, or is or was in 

 any way specially related to, any other organisms in nature through 

 evolution or by any other process. In support of all naturalistic 

 conjectures concerning man's origin there is not at this time a 

 shade of scientific evidence." After this it is not very convincing 

 to hear amateurs speaking oracularly of the " latest biological 

 discoveries." Among these discoveries* are those of Professor F. 

 Wood-Jones, Professor of Anatomy at the University of London, 

 who emphatically rejects the dictum of Huxley that " man, the 

 anthropoid apes, the monkey, the lemurs, the pronograde quad- 

 rupedal mammals represented a true evolutionary series." He says, 

 " No attentive student of anatomy can possibly believe this to be 

 true." He is just as positive, however, as Huxley that he has found 

 the true line of descent. The latest claimant, it appears, to the 

 honour of fathering the human race would be the tarsius, a nocturnal 

 squirrel-like creature, which is supposed to have inhabited the 



See Man's Ancestry, by the late T. B- Bishop, p. 8. 



