The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 42

Nature not self-originated—Darwinism

Nature not self-originated—Darwinism.

"None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural. On the other hand, the exact quality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent. Thus we have been led, along a strictly scientific path, very near to the point at which Science must stop. Not that science is debarred from studying the external mechanism of a molecule which she cannot take to pieces, any more than from investigating an organism which she cannot put together. But in tracing back the history of matter, Science is arrested when she assures herself, on the one hand, that the molecule has been made, and on the other, that it has not been made by any of the processes we call natural."

Professor Clerk Maxwell.

"When a thought passes through the mind, it is associated, as we have now abundant reason for believing, with some change in the protoplasm of the cerebral cells. Are we, therefore, justified in regarding thought as a property of the protoplasm of these cells, in the sense in which we regard muscular contraction as a property of the protoplasm of muscle? or is it really a property residing in something far different, but which may yet need for its manifestation the activity of cerebral protoplasm?

"If we could see any analogy between thought and any one of the admitted phenomena of matter, we should be justified in accepting the first of these conclusions as the simplest, and as affording a hypothesis most in accordance with the comprehensiveness of natural laws; but between thought and the physical phenomena of matter there is not only no analogy, but there is no conceivable analogy; and the obvious and continuous path which we have hitherto followed up in our reasonings from the phenomena of lifeless matter through those of living matter here comes suddenly to an end. The chasm between unconscious life and thought is deep and impassable, and no transitional phenomena can be found by which as by a bridge we may span it over; for even from irritability, to which, on a superficial view, consciousness may seem related, it is as absolutely distinct as it is from any of the ordinary phenomena of matter."

Professor G. J. Allman.

"I am ready to adopt it as an article of scientific faith, true through all space and through all time, that life proceeds from life and from nothing but life."

Sir William Thomson.

"The question of Spontaneous Generation is, I believe, practically set at rest for the scientific world."

Professor J. Tyndall.

"We fear the truth is that the study of mental philosophy, under the disastrous influence of one or two popular writers, has of late years become extremely loose and superficial, and Mr. Darwin does but illustrate the general vagueness of thought which prevails on such subjects."

" The Times."

"Over-hasty conclusions are, we regret to say, the rule in Mr. Darwin's conclusions as to man's genealogy."

" Quarterly Review."

"On the whole we must really acknowledge, that there is a complete absence of any fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man. Nay, if we gather together the whole sum of the fossil men hitherto known, and put them parallel with those of the present time, we can decidedly pronounce that there are among living men a much greater number of individuals who show a relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils known up to this time. . . One thing I must say—that not a single fossil skull of an ape or of an 'ape-man' has yet been found that could really have belonged to a human being. Every addition to the amount of objects, which we have obtained as materials for discussion, has removed us further from the hypothesis propounded. . . . As a matter of fact, we must positively recognize that there still exists as yet a sharp line of demarcation between man and the ape. We cannot teach, we cannot pronounce it to be a conquest of science, that man descends from the ape or from any other animal."

Professor Rudolf Virchow.

"Not because it is unutterably disgusting and humiliating, but because the idea is profoundly and irredeemably unscientific, founded on false data, false conceptions, and false reasoning do I altogether repudiate our 'wormy' and ape-like ancestry."

Dr. Charles Elam.

"Never perhaps in the history of philosophy have such wide generalizations been derived from such a small basis of facts. Mr. Darwin's theory of the growth of the moral sense and of the intellectual faculty is unsupported by any proof; and the very cornerstone of the hypothests, that the human mind is identical in kind with that of the brutes, is a mere assumption opposed alike to experience and philosophy."

" Edinburgh Review."

"We live in an age when young men prattle about Protoplasm and when young ladies in gilded saloons unconsciously talk Atheism."

The Earl of Beaconsfield.