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the beginning of his career, but slightly removed from the brute, and has been rising to higher
levels ever since.
b. The second great objection is that the theory has no adequate basis in well established facts.
It should be borne in mind that, as was pointed out before, the evolutionary theory in general,
though often represented as an established doctrine, is up to the present time nothing but an
unproved working hypothesis, and a hypothesis that has not yet given any great promise of
success in demonstrating what it set out to prove. Many of the most prominent evolutionists
frankly admit the hypothetical character of their theory. They still avow themselves to be firm
believers in the doctrine of descent, but do not hesitate to say that they cannot speak with any
assurance of its method of operation. When Darwin published his works, it was thought that
the key to the process was found at last, but in course of time it was found that the key did not
fit the lock. Darwin truly said that his theory depended entirely on the possibility of transmitting
acquired characteristics, and it soon became one of the corner-stones of Weismann’s biological
theory that acquired characteristics are not inherited. His opinion received abundant
confirmation by the later study of genetics. On the basis of the assumed transmission of
acquired characteristics, Darwin spoke with great assurance of the transmutation of species
and envisaged a continuous line of development from the primordial cell to man; but the
experiments of De Vries, Mendel, and others tended to discredit his view. The gradual and
imperceptible changes of Darwin made place for the sudden and unexpected mutations of De
Vries. While Darwin assumed endless variation in several directions, Mendel pointed out that
the variations or mutations never take the organism outside of the species and are subject to a
definite law. And modern cytology in its study of the cell, with its genes and chromosones as
the carriers of the inherited characters, confirmed this idea. The so-called new species of the
evolutionists were proved to be no true species at all, but only varietal species, that is varieties
of the same species. Nordenskioeld in his History of Biology quotes the following sentence from
a popular account of the results of heredity research, as reflecting the true state of affairs: “For
the very reason of the great number of facts that modern heredity-research has brought to
light, chaos prevails at present in regard to the views on the formation of species,” p. 613.
Prominent evolutionists now frankly admit that the origin of species is a complete mystery to
them. And as long as that is so, there is not much chance of their explaining the origin of man.
Darwin in his attempt to prove the descent of man from a species of anthropoid apes relied on
(1) the argument from the structural similarity between man and the higher animals; (2) the
embryological argument; and (3) the argument from rudimentary organs. To these three were
added later on, (4) the argument derived from blood tests; and (5) the palaeontological
argument. But none of these arguments furnish the desired proof. The argument from
structural likeness unwarrantably assumes that the similarity can be explained in only one way.