Evolution | Page 3

the flipper of the whale, and the
fin of the fish; and the endeavor to adapt itself to the water caused the
bird to develop a fin, as by a similar process the fore-leg of brutes
developed into the human arm and hand.
For our present consideration, we need not distinguish between
atheistic and theistic evolution, as the latter is subject to the
fundamental objections urged against evolution in general, and is, like
atheistic evolution, without a single fact to support it and in direct
contradiction of all that is known of the laws in operation now, and as
far back as knowledge penetrates. Moreover, so-called "theistic"

evolution is universally approved by infidels and skeptics and is used
by them as a favorite means of assault on revealed Truth.
Historical Review.
While in our own day the names of certain English and German
scientists (Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Romanes, Buechner,
Vogt, Haeckel) are inseparably connected with a history of this
hypothesis, its roots are found far back in the early ages of Greek
philosophy. A theory of evolutionary development was first
propounded by Greek thinkers living about 600 years B. C. The human
mind is ever on the search for unifying principles, principles which
account for entire groups of natural phenomena, and not for isolated
phenomena only. The Greek mind sought a principle by which to
account for the manifold and diverse forms of life in nature. Whence do
all things come? How have they come to be what they are? Questions
about the nature of the universe in which we live have been asked from
the very beginning. The moment the human mind began to reflect the
notion that the vegetation which covers the earth, the animals which
inhabit it, the rocks and hills, the mountains and valleys which
constitute its physical features, may have undergone changes in past
time, and that all the phenomena which constitute the animal, vegetable
and mineral worlds as they now exist, are but modifications of other
forms which have had their day and their philosophy, the idea of
development became prominent. The early Greek philosophers were
the first to attempt answers to these problems. Many of them held that
all things natural sprang from what they called the original
elements--fire, air, earth, water. Anaximander held that animals were
begotten from the earth by means of heat and moisture; and that man
was developed from other beings different in form. Empedocles had a
fantastic theory, viz., that the various parts of man and animals at first
existed independently, and that these--for instance, arms, legs, feet,
eyes, etc., gradually combined--perhaps after the manner in which
automobiles are assembled; and that these combinations became
capable of existing and even of propagating and reproducing
themselves. Anaxagoras was of opinion that animals and plants sprang
from the earth by means of germs carried in the atmosphere which gave

fecundity to the earth. Aristotle held opinions not very unlike those of
our own day. All of which goes to show that speculation about the
origin of the universe and the why and wherefore of living things did
not come into existence with the Darwinian hypothesis and that the
doctrine of descent with modification as an explanation of all biological
phenomena antedates by over two thousand years the publication of the
"Origin of Species."
In modern times a theory of development was first suggested by
Goethe in his "Italienische Reise." Acting under the same mental urge
for seeing diverse forms under a unifying principle, Goethe looked for
the original form of plant life, the Urpflanze, the plant which would be
at once simple enough to stand for a type of all plants and yet
susceptible to variation in so many directions that all plants might
derive from it their origin. Goethe has also clothed this conception in
poetic form.
The first philosophic statement of the hypothesis is found in Immanuel
Kant's "Kritik der Urteilskraft," 1790. In paragraph 80 we find a
discussion of the similarity between so many species of animals, not
only in their bony structure, but also in the arrangement of their other
parts, a similarity which, says Kant, "casts a ray of hope," that all forms
may be traced back to original simple forms, to "a generation from a
common ancestor," rising from the lowest forms to man, "according to
mechanical laws." Kant assumes that, for instance, certain aquatic
animals by and by formed into amphibia, and from these after some
generations were produced land animals. A treatise of the same
philosopher entitled "Presumable Origin of Humanity" suggests that
man in the early age of the world was developed from "mere animal
creatures." Even a universal law of world-formation (cosmic evolution)
was set forth by Kant in a work which he published anonymously in
1775.
In its relations to