Evolution

Evolution, by Theodore
Graebner

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Title: Evolution An Investigation and a Critique
Author: Theodore Graebner

Release Date: September 18, 2006 [eBook #19321]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
EVOLUTION***
E-text prepared by Kurt A. T. Bodling, formerly Director of Library
Services at Concordia College, Bronxville, New York, USA

EVOLUTION.

An Investigation and a Criticism
by
TH. GRAEBNER, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo.

Milwaukee, Wis. Northwestern Publishing House, 1921.

Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens.
Linne.

To the Memory of my teacher (New Ulm, 1892) John Schaller
Educator, Theologian, Student of Science these chapters are dedicated
by The Author

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Chapter 1.
An Outline of the Theory...11 Definition--Historical Review--The
Darwinian Hypothesis--Lines of Evidence--The Descent of Man--The
Nebular Hypothesis--The Origin of Life--The Bearing of Evolution on
Christianity.
Chapter 2.
Unexplained Origins...29 The Origin of the Universe--The Origin of
Life--Biological Barriers-- Man.
Chapter 3.
The Testimony of the Rocks...47

Chapter 4.
The Fixity of Species...62
Chapter 5.
Rudimentary Organs...70
Chapter 6.
Instinct...74
Chapter 7.
Heredity...80
Chapter 8.
A Scientific Creed Outworn...87
Chapter 9.
Man...94
Chapter 10.
The Verdict of History...113
Chapter 11.
Evidences of Design...124
Chapter 12.
The Fatal Bias...141

PREFATORY.
I first read Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" in the library of my
sainted uncle, John Schaller, at New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1892. I did not
comprehend all of it then, a cause, to me, of considerable chagrin, for
which I later found some consolation in the opinion of Dr. Frederick
Lynch, who pronounces Darwin's epochal work "one of the two most
difficult books in the English language." But like many others, I
understood enough of Darwin's book to catch glimpses of the grandeur
of the conception which underlies its argumentation. It was then that
my beloved uncle, out of that wide and accurate reading which so
frequently astonished his friends, and with that penetrating dialectic of
his, opened my eyes to certain fallacies in Darwin's argument,
especially to the fatal weakness of the chapter on Instinct. The reading
of St. George Mivart's book "The Genesis of Species" later convinced
me of the accuracy of my uncle's judgment. But the fascination of the
subject persisted, and for a time Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic
Philosophy," by the comprehensiveness of its induction and its vast
array of data, exercised its thrall. Alfred Russel Wallace's "Darwinism,"
Huxley's "Lectures on Evolution," Tyndall's "The Beginning of
Things," Grant Allen's "The Evolutionist at Large," Eimer's
"Orthogenesis," Clodd's "Story of Creation," occupied me in turn, until
the apodictic presentation of John Fiske's Essays on Darwinism, no less
than the open and haggard opposition to Christianity which prevails in
Huxley's "Science and Hebrew Tradition" and in Spencer's chapters on
"The Unknowable" (so the Synthetic Philosophy denominates God),
caused a revulsion of sentiment,--the anti-religious bias of evolution
standing forth the clearer to my mind, the longer I occupied myself
with the subject.
I determined to investigate for myself the data on which the
speculations whose mazes I had trod these years were built up. The
leisure hours of three years were devoted to the study of first-hand
sources of Comparative Religion. The result of this research was
deposited in two articles contributed to the Theological Quarterly in
1906 and 1907. I fear that the forbidding character of the foot-notes
served as an effective deterrent to the reading of these articles. I have

now given, in several chapters of this little volume, in popular language
the argument against evolution to be derived from the study of Religion.
The reading of Le Conte's and Dana's text-books of geology and
various other treatises supplied the data on palaeontology embodied in
the first chapters of the book. The notable circulus in concludendo
("begging the question") of which evolutionists here are guilty was first
pointed out to me by Prof. Tingelstad of Decorah, Iowa, who was in
1908 taking a course in Evolution at Chicago University, and who
called on me for discussion of the doctrine as he received it from
"head-quarters."
An an excursus in the subject of Pedagogy, I have treated in my
Seminary lectures the past years, under the head of natural sciences, the
argument against evolution, and the outlines of these lectures have
furnished the framework for the present volume. It is hoped that
especially our young men and women who take courses at our
universities will examine the case against the fascinating and in some
respects magnificent conception of evolution as this case