SOME DIFFICULTIES OF EVOLUTION. 



83. 



greatest error he had committed was not allowing sufficient weight 

 to the direct action of the environment. 



When, therefore, we speak of evolution, we must explain what 

 particular meaning we attach to the word. At one end of the 

 scale it may mean nothing more than the general scheme of pro- 

 gression, outlined in Genesis i. as the method of the Creator. At 

 the other it may connote a directive force that has itself fashioned 

 every form of life without any creator at all. 



Dr. Etheridge (Brit. Mus.) says of such evolution: " Nine- 

 tenths is . . . wholly unsupported by fact. " Professor Bateson, 

 F.E.S., in his address in 1914 as President (British Association), 

 said: " Natural selection cannot have been the chief factor in 

 determining the species of animals and plants. We go to Darwin 

 . . . but to us he speaks no more with philosophical authority." 

 Such voices from within seem to justify this paper from an out- 

 sider. 



Ijooking now a little closer at human ancestry, we discover 

 (1022), after fifty years of hot debates about primates and 

 monkeys, that none has been found — the ape-descent, so 

 vehemently insisted on, being practically given up. 



2. A second difficulty is to trace the lines of ascent to man in 

 evolution, for even ontogeny, that impregnable rock of evolution, 

 is now failing us. By ontogeny I mean the reproduction in the 

 tmbryo of the successive steps in the evolution of the race with 

 which he is credited by phylogeny. Professor Keith declares the 

 deductions from ontogeny and phylogeny are not valid, while Pro- 

 fessor Sidgwick, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, says there is no 

 proof of their relations, and Bergson totally rejects the parallel. 

 This foundation is, then, getting quite shaky, and already needs 

 some propping up. Partially as a result of this, we fear we must 

 at last part with our old friend — " the missing link." He is in- 

 deed, in a parlous state. Leading scientists of the day stoutly 

 deny the existence of our friend anywhere-. He is certainly 

 backward in coming forward. Professor Keith says indeed, this 

 missing link is now generally given up. For man to have 

 descended from the ape would require millions of years and 100 

 links : and of such there is no record, nor any trace. 



Some sixteen fragments of fossil skulls exist in the world now, 

 after nearly a century of diligent search, and on these the 

 existence oi our friend was based. Professor Eudolf Virchow, 

 "however, surely a first-rate authority, after careful examination 

 of the Pithecanthropos — the missing link in the South Kensing- 

 ton Museum — pronounced it to be an ape ; and on the further 

 evidences declares there is no missing link or proanthropos 

 amongst them, and that our friend is a phantom. 



Some Japanese fossil skulls just discovered, and some others of 

 very remote date, have actually a larger brain capacity than 



