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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 59

The Previous Question of Science Regarding Evolution

The Previous Question of Science Regarding Evolution.

The evolution in question is especially of species in physical nature. It is an interesting circumstance that there is not one clear case of actual evolution of species in the history of nature as known to mankind. That was intimated a few months ago by the late Sir Wyville Thomson, an avowed Evolutionist, of Challenger reputation as a naturalist of highest class, in what I suppose to have been his last inaugural address. It was of course admitted by Mr Huxley, the diving apostle of evolutionism, when with his charming frankness, he said that we might have seen a case of actual evolution if we had been there—as of course we might, if the evolution was there. And it is implied in the well-known evolutionary postulate, that of this process of nature the result at every time must be supposed to be infinitesimaily small, so as to be imperceptible to a microscopic onlooker on the spot.

The circumstance is impressive in relation to the question of fact, whether there is such a thing as evolution in physical nature. If the evolution was there, why are there no clear traces of it here and now? A vast army, horse, foot, artillery and baggage, has marched across a green field, and left no trace of the transition; but the turf unbroken, the prim-rose upright on the stem, while "ilka blade o' grass keps its ain drap o' dew." Yet other things, even the tiniest, have left their traces clearly legible: the footprint of birds, the trail of earth-worms, the mark of rain drops, the ripple of gentle breezes on fine sands. Surely that army is a phantom host, like that of the avenging Teutons in vision of Erckmaun Chatrian's crazy German schoolmaster, on their way from Fatherland across the Rhine to reconquest of Elsatz and Lothringen.

Other processes of nature, that is, those Really known to us, gravitation, for instance, and ordinary generation, bear witness to their reality every day, before our eyes, in actual cases of gravitation and generation countlessly multitudinous, infinitely more numerous than the stars in the firmament or the sands on the seashore. How comes it, then, that this alleged process of nature is fruitless in appearance as a long extinct volcano? A volcano can become extinct, as gas is turned off at the meter, or a fire burns down in the grate. But what can be meant by exhaustion of a great fundamental process of nature, while nature herself remains in full wigour of productiveness, as shown in her processes of generation and gravitation?

Besides, an extinct volcano leaves traces to all future ages of its activity in the past; although, as compared with the alleged evolution, its action can have been only as one evening watch fire in a series of great campaigns. The evolution must have extended over the whole history of origination, through all the vast aeons, Palaeozoic, Mezozoic, and Tertiary, recorded and depicted for our leading in Geologic Pictorial History of Origination, vols. I., IX, III., of which the grand finale of pur Quaternary with Man is only as the last page with a Finis at the foot. Yet, we are told, it has left no "foot-print on the sands of time."

And further, that fundamental process of nature, why should we have vainly to look for it only in the records of the past? Why do we not see it in operation at this hour? Why are there not clear cases now occurring of actual origination of new species? Not only around man throned and crowned as lord of ail, but higher than he, and yet higher, and higher still, like the steps of the ladder of angels at Mahanaim? It is true that we cannot at any moment see the grass growing; but we can see it grown; so that it is to-day in the summer where it was not in the early Spring. The new species, though they should be long on their way toward completeness, ought, as the result of evolution, to be every day arriving at completeness, coming into manifestation as new and distinct; ranks hitherto unseen ever coming into view on the heels of those which have become visible before, as the ranks of an endless army, in wave after wave, appearing page break on the crest of origination in the dawning, where the morn of life is jocund ever new—if, indeed, on the misty mountain top. We might have seen a case, you say, if we had been there. But we are there; on the theatre of the evolutionary process of nature—if, indeed, there be any such process, of a nature which is alive in the present as in the past.

The previous question, to which our attention is now to be directed, is of what lawyers call the issue in the case: How are we to bring this matter into shape, for a judgment upon it according to truth? I propose that we should look upon it from the view point of science in the strict sense of physical or natural science, constituted by interpretation of physical nature in her facts for ascertainment of her doctrines. It is true that in a general sense, which is a true sense, science includes all reasoned information that is solid, all knowledge that rises above simple apprehension of details into comprehension of them through relative principle, or, to perception of the principle in pervasive domination of details. Regarding a process of nature we may have such information that is not derived from nature: as we may obtain knowledge of watch-work, not only through study of machinery and material but also from such relatively external sources at the testimony of a competent witness, and if we have such information regarding origin of species, the circumstance of its being extra-natural in source need not hinder it from being truly scientific in quality. We therefore shall reserve the right of all real knowledge of the matter to be taken into account in the final judgment of science regarding evolution. But for the present we shall contemplate the matter simply in the light of natural or physical science, self-restricted to ascertainment of nature's process from nature herself in her facts, observed, collected, tested and digested.

The previous question being—How are we to judge the claims of the evolution hypothesis to be received as a theory of the origin of species, I find the answer to be: By forming a clear and distinct idea," (1) Of the fact of the alleged process of nature, (2) Of the specific nature of the process, and (3) Of the alleged extent in physical nature. (1) Is it [unclear: image not readable] as a reality of nature? (2) What precisely is it said to be? (3) How far is it supposed to extend in operation? The Cartesian [unclear: image not readable] of "clear and distinct ideas" is important in relation to all questions of physical science; for it is in clearness that science lives, and by distinctness that she moves progressing through differentiation to victorious ascertainment, And it is peculiarly important in the present case, because in connection with evolution there appears to be a peculiar proclivity toward obscure indistinctness, as if the children of Evolutionism, had, like Israel in the Red Sea, been all baptised in the cloud.