Part 2

Ascending the animal scale we come to the line separating the invertebrates from the vertebrates. Here, on the invertebrate side are species that have the beginnings of a backbone--an elastic smooth cord--and gill-slits, thus proving their relationship with the fishes, the lowest of the vertebrates.

The connecting link between the fish and the reptile groups is the amphibians--frogs, newts, salamanders, etc. The frog in its tadpole stage is a fish, but acquiring legs and lungs it becomes an air-breather, a land animal.

Between the reptile and the bird, and having certain characteristics of both, there are at least three extinct species, known by their fossils. One of these, archaeopteryx, had the skeleton and feathers of a bird and a reptile tail composed of twenty vertebrae. Another was a flying reptile with a bird-shaped head.

Reptiles (snakes, lizards, turtles, aligators, etc.) are cold-blooded, egg-laying animals. Birds retain the egg-laying characteristic of reptiles but are warm-blooded like the mammals. The latter differ from both birds and reptiles in producing their young alive and suckling them. Between the mammal and its ancestor, the reptile, but classed with the former is the duck-mole of Australia. It is an egg-laying, web-footed, duck-billed quadruped. After its young are hatched they are suckled in a sort of mammary pouch which is without nipples. Above the duck-mole, but so low in the mammal group that they are not really mammals are the marsupials (kangaroos, opossums, etc.). Their young are so immature at birth that they are for some time carried in a pouch by the mother.

We have now come to the last great chasm--that between man and the other mammals. As man belongs in the same group with them the chasm is not so great in the sum of physical characters as is that between the fish and the reptile groups, or between the reptiles and the mammals. In regard to man and the higher apes the dividing line, viewed from the stand-point of descent, is vertical rather than horizontal--like that between mammals and birds.

There are no species, extinct or extant, between man and the ape. It is not necessary for the proof of evolution that there should be. “Missing links” are not more required here than they are between birds and mammals which were evolved side by side from reptiles. If ten feet below the topmost bough of a tree there is another branch it is not necessary to show that there are, or have been, intermediate branches to prove that both grew from the same trunk. Missing links are required only _in the line of descent_.

Discoveries of the fossil remains of man are rare for many reasons. (1) Land animals rarely leave their remains in the sediment of sea and lake. (2) There is small chance of the sediment containing the fossils of recently arrived animals--more especially of man, the latest arrival--being lifted above the water level because of the slow movements of the earth’s crust. (3) Only those animal remains that are buried in localities where they will be impregnated with certain mineral salts will be preserved. (4) They must be able to resist those destructive agencies (especially erosion by water) that disintegrate the rock in which they are embedded if they are to come down to us as evidence. (5) Only a small part of the earth as yet has been searched, and nearly all the fossil discoveries have been accidental. For these reasons the geological record in respect to fossil evidences is far from complete. Yet from time to time new discoveries are filling in the gaps in the record.

Anthropologists present us with evidences of pre-historic races that were far lower than the lowest savage of today. Some of the evidences of man’s existence tens of thousands of years ago were known before Darwin set the world astir with his revolutionary discovery, and the old school geologists, like Hugh Miller, who had not been entirely weaned from scriptural literalism were sadly puzzled in regard to the evidences of these “pre-Adamites.”

Fossils have been found showing several gradations or stages in development intermediate between man and his pre-human ancestor--evidences which, if they do not completely bridge the chasm, stand as ruined pillars, broken arches, isolated spans of the bridge over which man was many hundreds of thousands of years in crossing.

The first skull discovered (sixty years ago) of the Neanderthal men was so entirely different from other pre-historic skulls that one scientist declared it was a mal-formation; but other fossils were found later that proved the peculiarities to be racial characteristics. These men, who lived in Europe down to thirty thousand years ago, were squat, bent-kneed, thick-skulled, almost chinless, and with ridge-like projections over deep-set eyes. In skull development they were lower than any savage of today.

Older than the Neanderthal race, and lower in the human scale, were the Heidelberg men, said to have been the first really human beings of whom we have fossil evidences. Judging from the age of the fossil beds they existed from 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Thirty years ago were found some of the fossil remains of a creature in Java, some forty feet below the surface, that show characters intermediate between the gorilla and the Neanderthal man; “the lowest human cranium yet described, very nearly as much below the Neanderthal as this is below the normal European.” This creature was named Pithecanthropus Erectus (erect ape-man).

Lack of space prevents even a brief description of other and intermediate types of man, such as the man of Spy, of Naulette, of Predmost, etc.

As the more man develops (becomes specialized) the farther he is removed from the lower animals, so, in tracing his descent toward his origin we find him approaching them, apes included, in general characteristics, for we approach the point of divergence.

Evolution is a fact. There is no doubt of that in the minds of those who have investigated the subject without prejudice and with the acquisition of truth as the sole aim. One may dispute a fact, but he cannot deny it out of existence. Those who feel a sense of shame for their close proximity to their cousin, the monkey, are advised to increase that distance by carrying to higher development those traits considered peculiarly human: Reason, a sense of justice, of broader sympathy, and tolerance.

By his great discovery Darwin delivered the heaviest solar plexus blow to human vanity it ever received. For this he deserves, and receives, the eternal gratitude of every right-thinking man and woman.

How was evolution brought about? What are its laws, and how do they work?

NATURAL SELECTION

When the farmer or the stock-breeder selects his seeds or his animals for propagating purposes he has an eye to a great natural law, heredity. He knows that scrub animals and the seeds of degenerate plants will stamp their inferiority upon their descendants. He has learned that like produces like, therefore he selects such seeds and animals as will produce those best suited to his purposes. He is not only guided by his knowledge of a great law of Nature, but in the main he is following her method in preserving and improving the breed. This method of changing and improving plants and animals under domestication is called artificial selection.

Plants and animals in the natural state are capable of multiplying at so enormous a rate that there is an incessant struggle for existence going on among them. If it were not for this fierce struggle with one another and with their enemies and other environmental forces in which the vast majority die early, the world would be overstocked. There is hardly a species of animal of which a single pair would not choke out all other animal life in a few generations by filling the world with its descendants if all of the one species were permitted to reach old age. If a pair of elephants (one of the slowest-breeding species of animals) should bring forth only six young ones, and all should live to be one hundred years old, their descendants in 750 years would number nineteen million--a number so great that they would form a closely-packed herd occupying forty-one square miles. The codfish produces nine million eggs a year. If each egg should develop into a mature fish, half of them females, in ten years the sea would be a solid mass of codfish.

This tendency to increase at so tremendous a rate, and the fact that no two individuals are exactly alike, supply the material and the conditions for the great law of natural selection to operate. Each individual must of necessity compete so fiercely with other individuals of the same species, and of allied species, and with enemies, with climate and changing conditions that out of the struggling many only a few live to propagate. Those individuals that vary from the mass in the right direction live; the others die, leaving few descendants, or none.

Though like produces like there are no two individuals exactly alike. If all of the same species were alike there would be no opportunity for the law of natural selection to operate. Nothing but chance would determine in the struggle for existence which individuals would live to propagate their species and which would die without descendants. Nor would it matter, so far as the species is concerned. But individuals do differ in their traits in some degree--Wallace has shown that variation usually amounts from ten to twenty, sometimes twenty-five, per cent of the varying part--and this variation, even if small, often spells the difference between an early death with no descendants and a long life with a numerous progeny.

By the law of heredity the descendants are endowed in a greater or less degree with the same life-saving characteristics of their parents. Each generation being subjected to this weeding-out process, and only a few of the best fitted individuals being selected to preserve the species, we can easily see that, as the generations come and go, those essential, life-saving characters or traits are being developed to a greater and greater degree. And this means change, modification of species.

With horn or tooth or claw or hoof or sting or poison or odor, among all the wild creatures that swim or crawl or run or climb or fly, the struggle for life and food and mate goes on today just as it has gone on for millions of years. Other factors in the struggle are alertness, agility, cunningness, sharpness of vision and hearing and smell, protective color of covering, fleetness of foot and wing, the degree of heat, the amount of moisture and the food supply.

The traits that survive are of course those that are the most useful in a given environment. (By environment is meant surroundings, all outside influences, the not-me of each individual.) A change of environment, of the conditions of life, calls for a re-adjustment of the traits most vital to the individual in the new environment. In one environment one highly developed trait would be most useful while in another some other character or set of characters would be the saving factor, because a change of environment means a change of weather conditions, of the food supply and the means of getting it, of enemies, etc.

From the foregoing brief outline it would seem that only a little exercise of reason is required of any one to see that natural selection operating in unlike environments would, in the course of many generations, produce from the same species types of animals (or plants) very unlike--not only unlike each other but unlike their parent species. At first these types derived from a common ancestor would be only varieties, but varieties are incipient species. Given sufficient time, and the intervention of natural barriers to prevent the crossing of extremes, and the creation of new species would be the natural result.

As a vivid illustration of how the law of natural selection works, and of how great is the sum of the results of its operation accumulated through many generations, let us observe one of many modifications an animal undergoes in its struggle for existence. To the question, “Why are animals of the arctic regions white?” we ought to be able, with what we already know of natural selection, to give the answer. Imagine those lands of snow and ice originally inhabited by animals of all colors from white to black, or even of all shades of one color, brown. The animals of what colors or shades, among the flesh-eaters, would have the least difficulty in stealthily approaching their prey, and so, be most apt to survive in the struggle against starvation? And which among the animals preyed on would run the least risk of detection and so be most likely to escape destruction? The answer to both questions, of course, would be, “Those whose colors most nearly conformed to the snowy background.” Imagine this process of culling out the darker colors continuing for many generations and we can understand that the whiteness of all arctic animals would be the inevitable result. We can also see why most wild animals of our regions are of colors that best harmonize with the brown earth and dead leaves. Let us keep in mind the fact that while we were observing the modification of one character, all the favorable variations, however slight, in every other character that could be of the least advantage to those creatures were being added up as fast as they appeared. After several generations, if for any cause the environment were undergoing a radical change, or if a species had migrated from a widely different one, a greatly modified animal would be the result. However, there can be no modification in an animal perfectly adapted to its environment--provided the environment does not change.

Every organ, and every other part of the body, internal and external, of every creature in the natural state is subject to modification by the law of natural selection, just as was the color of the hair or the feathers of polar animals.

Man’s method of improving plants and animals--artificial selection--interferes with the work of natural selection. For one thing, man makes a radical change in the environment of every plant and animal he domesticates; for another, man selects for other purposes than the one Nature has in view--that is, if it can be said that Nature has a purpose.

From the same parent stock man breeds one strain of cattle for beef, another for milk and butter; one variety of the horse for the saddle and another for draft purposes. Nature adapts the species to the environment--never the environment to the species--sacrificing those individuals that do not measure up to her standard. She seems to care only for the species, not for the individuals, or only for those individuals that give promise of a better species.

This secret wrung from Nature (natural selection as a factor in progressive development) is man’s most precious truth, for it is the key to his further progress.

To summarize: organisms tend to increase at a great rate; this intensifies the struggle for existence; organisms vary; in the struggle for existence the vast majority die early, leaving those that vary in the favorable direction to live and reproduce; this means change, progress. This is natural selection.

There is also De Vries’ “Mutations theory” which some scientists believe to have been an important factor in evolution. It is the theory that at times a species may progress by “jumps”--that is, that occasionally individuals come into existence that vary extremely from the mass, and that they may become the parents of a new species. It is on account of the relative value attached by some scientists to this theory and to natural selection that they disagree, and not in regard to whether or not evolution is a fact.

NATURAL SELECTION IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION

The law of natural selection, or of the survival of the fittest, is not confined to plant and animal life. Its sway is universal. Every thing that is born, spawned, hatched, sprouted, conceived, invented, or founded is tested by this law, and if found inefficient, unfit, is weeded out, leaving the fittest, the best, the truest to survive.

On the mental plane the law of the survival of the fittest is often restricted in its operation, and the struggle unnecessarily prolonged, because of the intolerance of those of the older, dominant belief. The world lags because they refuse to permit the new idea to meet the old on equal terms before the only court having jurisdiction over truth and error--the court of Reason.

Intolerant people--and they are legion--either lack faith in the power of truth to triumph over error, or they harbor a lurking doubt in their own minds in regard to the amount of truth embodied in the belief they so anxiously shield. They regard belief--their belief--as something to be protected at any cost. Freedom of opinion, intellectual honesty, truth itself must yield rather than _their_ belief be in jeopardy. They seem to think it more blessed to believe something they received at second hand than to investigate and know the truth. With them it’s “Believe so and so; open your mouths like young mocking-birds and swallow it, smack your lips and call it good.” For people of that mental type to tell us to think--why, that is never thought of.

This forcing one to subscribe to a doctrine through fear, or to accept an idea on authority, belongs to the medieval age. And we resent it--we whose minds have not been altogether shaped by the kingly, priestly authority of five hundred years ago. We say, “Give us the evidences of your belief; if they are sufficient we cannot help believing. Let us meet in fair discussion and compare evidences. Drop your intolerance. Let your idea stand or fall on its merits--that’s all we ask of ours. Let the law of natural selection have a chance to operate.”

Not belief, but truth, is the one essential, and when discussion reveals the evidence supporting it belief is attracted to it like steel filings to a magnet. O ye of little faith, doubt not that in a struggle for existence between truth and error the fittest, that is, truth, will survive and error be eliminated.

Truth crushed to earth will rise again-- The eternal years are hers-- While Error, wounded, writhes in pain And dies among her worshippers.

“A lie on the throne is a lie, still, and truth in a dungeon is truth, still; and a lie on the throne is on the way to defeat, and truth in a dungeon is on the way to victory.”

“If there is anything that cannot stand the truth, let it crack.”

EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE

The Bible itself contains evidences of evolution. As the Jews climbed up in the scale of civilization their ideals, their conception of what should constitute a God, also arose. It is a far cry from the ancient Hebraic conception of God, down through the prophets to the idea of divinity as taught by Jesus. Let the reader lay aside his prejudice, if any he has, be honest with himself, and compare Jehovah of the early Jews with Jesus’ portrayal of God as a father, as one whose synonym is live.

Jehovah, according to the early writers, was stern, wrathful, vengeful--“I will mock you in your calamities”; vain and jealous--“I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God”; cruel--hardening the hearts of his powerless victims in order to punish them for doing what they could not help doing, and according to Joshua, Jehovah commanded him to kill all his enemies, old and young, even the children, and he gave the captured wives of the enemy to the soldiers of the Jewish army; deceptive--“I have sent lying spirits unto Ahab”; in short, and in very truth, he was a god having all the frailties and imperfections of man, and not man at his best either.

Take the Genesis story of creation:--When Jehovah created Adam he knew (being an all-wise God) that Adam would fall. Therefore, Adam could not have done otherwise than to yield to temptation; for to have resisted would have proved God’s foreknowledge false. Then why pronounce a curse on one (and his billions of descendants) for doing what God’s foreknowledge made unavoidable?

Again it is said that when Jehovah made up his mind to destroy the human race “it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth”--that is, he had made a mistake, like you and I, and was sorry of it, like you and I. How like a man was Jehovah in his short-sightedness!

And this is a part of that story of the origin of man which we are asked to accept by the anti-evolutionists instead of the scientific explanation.

Before history there was mythology. Beyond the earliest ascertained historic facts of every people, of every early nation, was a mass of myths portraying its childish beliefs concerning its origin, its gods, its heroes, etc. The Jewish nation was no exception. Scriptural literalists, those who believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible, know that all ancient peoples had their myths--all except the Jews. In the face of a million facts they still contend that the impossible stories of the early Jews are true as gospel--in fact that they are a part of the gospel.

The greatest obstacle to the popular acceptance of the doctrine of evolution is a belief in the verbal inspiration of the Bible and its literal interpretation. The more conservative or orthodox element of the churches regards the Bible as a direct quotation of the exact words of God. Their conception of inspiration is that the various writers merely held the pen while God caused it to move over the surface of the parchment tracing the characters that spelled his very words. The fact that the various books of the Bible are written in almost as many different styles would seem to disprove verbal inspiration to any thinking mind. Certainly, those books called the Bible are inspired, and in precisely the same sense as Shakespeare’s plays, Burns’ poems and Emerson’s essays are inspired--that is, the writers felt strongly an impulse to write; and in every instance the writings were stamped with the individuality of the author.

All inspiration is not on the same level--the higher the spirituality the deeper the source. For example, as one writer has pointed out, when Paul said, “Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his works,” he was not inspired in the same sublime degree as was Jesus, when, rising above his own sufferings, he remembered his tormentors in the prayer: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.”

The belief in verbal inspiration has scotched the wheels of progress at every turn. Four hundred years ago those who taught the rotundity of the earth were denounced as heretics. It was a belief in verbal inspiration that inspired the church to force Galileo, who taught that the earth is not the center of the universe, but that it revolves around the sun, to make the recantation: “I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees before your eminences * * abjure, detest and curse the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth.” Even Newton’s great discovery of the law of gravitation was denounced as “subversive of natural, and inferentially, of revealed religion.”

A hundred years ago the use of anesthetics in childbirth was opposed in Scotland on the ground that it was seeking to remove the curse God had placed upon the daughters of Eve for her transgression.