--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Webb, Robert C. collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 17 number: 11 published: 1914-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Webb, Robert C., "The Evolution Hypothesis: What It Is", *Improvement Era* 17, no. 11 (September 1914): 1040–1047.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera17011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera17011unse start_page: 1040 end_page: 1047 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1914-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera17011unse publication_year: 1914 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1914, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Evolution Hypothesis: What It Is The Evolution Hypothesis: What it is BY ROBERT C. WEBB Could the theory of evolution have remained a zoological speculation, attempting to furnish an explanation for the origin of life-forms, it might have served a useful end in stimulating research into obscure details of anatomy, paleontology, etc., as has certainly been its influence, in some measure, under present conditions. When, however, it is brought to bear upon all other sciences, the stimulating effect is less impressively obvious. It has ceased, in fact, to be a mere hypothesis of specialists in the natural sciences, and has become the foundation of a cult. It cannot be urged, therefore, that a ''layman" in natural science shows "presumption" in questioning the validity of the original hypothesis, since he would be but following in the footsteos of the natural scientists themselves, who have not hesitated to invade the fields of logic, philosophy, ethics, theology, etc., in which they have shown themselves, not merely "laymen," but also amateurs of the crassest variety. Their voluminous writings, also, have made the general principles of natural science so accessible to the average reader that none but an ignoramus could fail to understand the main points. Furthermore, it is inadmissible to claim, as some have claimed, that specialists in scie.nce, knowing f 10 facts " 1 gleaned by investigation, are, of necessity to be credited with such deeper insights, or such command of logical principles that it is proper to accept their explanations, even of the facts most familiar to them. Principal Dawson remarked of Darwin, as reported, that he was a "very good zoologist, but a very poor logician" nor — — was this the opinion of a mere "layman" and this judgment applies with singular force to very many of the foremost followers of Darwin and his opinions. They are very good natural scientists, undoubtedly, but amazingly poor philosophers, and wreched logicians. The uncritical enthusiasm with which many natural scientists have invaded other special fields of thought and research is well exemplified in the following passage by Professor Joseph Le Conte "Everyone is familiar with the main facts connected with the flevelopement of an egg. * * * Now this process is evolution. Tt is more, — it is the type of all evolution. Tt is that from which we get our irlea of evolution, and without which there would be nn such word. * * * The process pervades the whole universe, and 'I'll E KV< tl.l'TK IN HYPOTHESIS 1041 the doctrine concerns alike every department of science, department of human thought, literally one half of —yea, every — Evolution mid Relation its it Religious Thought. to is all science." Edward Clodd is equally emphatic in making precisely similar claims; although the consistency of his reasoning might be questioned by some. He writes : "If the theory of evolution be not universal, the germs of decay are in it. And here we pass from what is interesting to what is of serious import for us, because if the phenomena of mind are not capable of a like mechanical explanation as the phenomena of stars and planets, and of vegetable and animal life, evolution remains only a speculation to fascinate the curious. It can, in that case, furnish no rule of life or motive to conduct, and man, Hit root and crown of things,' would be the sole witness against their unity and totality. If there be in him any faculty which is no part of the contents of the universe, if there be anything done by him which lies outside the range ot causation, then the doctrine of the Conservation ol tnergv falls to pieces, for man has the power to add to that which the physicist demonstrates can neither be increased nor lessened." Story of Creation. The influence of such thinkers acts, of course, to confirm the conviction of our current "rationalism" that the assumption of a mechanical universe, whose mechanism is perfectly obvious to the scientific investigator of the present day, must, of necessity, be preferable to one in which, as any careful thinker must admit, there is an inestimable substratum of unknown, unintelligible and unimaginable fact, necessarily existing, however, since that which evidently exists demands a cause or justification that is fairly beyond the reach of the investigator. The complacency with which small minds will bask in the conceit of intellectual all-Surtici ncy has ever been notable in the advocates of the various "worldformulae" which have successively claimed the name of ''science." Thus, Galileo, and others, were bitterly denounced in their age for denying the current notions of the universe, and teaching "h resies concerning the antipodes." And why not? Was not the flatness of the earth a perfectly obvious fact? How could it be a sphere, when the people on the "under side" must fall off? This is only typical "rationalism," which assumes that a theory in closest accord with familiar and obvious experiences must necessarily be more nearly true than one which insists, with all logical consistency, that we do not even know that we understand the "obvious experiences," or that they can be justified to the reason, any more readily than things unknown, and perhaps, unknowable. However, "rationalism" has ever been so irrational that it has been unable to discern the fact that a good part of its thinking consists of words rather than perfectly comprehended, or intelligible, ideas. Thus, following the traditional remark of the old philosopher, Archimedes, who stated that, could he get a foothold 1042 IMPROVEMENT ERA outside the world somewhere, he could move the earth with a lever, many persons still assume that they could accomplish not only this feat, but also that, were they so placed in space as to have the materials convenient, they could, on the basis of their present knowledge, make a very tair '"bluff" at creating" a universe on their own account. Their "knowledge" is so simple and obvious that it must be a surprise that the joy of discovery has Leen reserved for themselves. In some such spirit, we find Romanes writing thus "When Kepler was unable to explain by any known causes the paths described by the planets, he resorted to a supernatural explanation, and supposed that every planet was guided in its movements by some presiding angel. But when Newton supplied a beautifully simple physical explanation, all persons with a scientific habit of mind at once abandoned the metaphysical explanation. Now, to be consistent, the above-mentioned professors, (Sir William Hamilton, et al) and all who think with them, ought still to adhere to Kepler's hypothesis in .preference to Newton's explanation; for, excepting the law of parsimony (Hamilton's), there is certainly no other logical objection to the statement that the movements of the planets afford as good evidence of the influence of guiding angels as they do of iiie influence of gravitation.—Scientific lzzidence u\ urgunic involution. This passage is a very fair example of the very thing previously mentioned. While, as Romanes says, the theory of gravitation explains the movements of the planets, and while it is evidently unnecessary, if not unwarranted, to accept Kepler's explanation of angelic pilots, since we know nothing whatever about the ultimate cause and nature of the force producing the phenomena, it is true, nevertheless, that a theory of creation which postulates only the forces and activities obvious to our science is not a theory, hypothesis or explanation of any kind, but a stupid fiction devised by an ignorant mind. We evidently know nothing of final causes, in their methods of operation at least, but it is absurd to deny their existence because they are unintelligible to us. We might as well deny the existence of the dynamo, which we cannot see, and assume that the current that lights the lamps in our homes circulates eternally in a closed circuit, without a constant source of generation, which we have not seen, and may never see. The German philosopher Schopenhauer, although himself the promulgator of some theories not wholly obvious, protested against, the activities of our zoological speculators as follows: "Knights of the crucible and retort should be made to understand that the mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher. Certain other like-minded investigators of nature, too, must be taught that a man may be an accomplished zoologist, and have the sixty species of monkeys at his fingers' ends, vet on the whole be an ignoramus to be classed with the vulgar, if he has learned nothing else, save, perhaps, his school catechism. But in our time this frequently happens. Men set themselves up for THE EVOLUTH )N 1 1 V l»( )TI ESI S I [043 enlighteners of mankind, who have studied chemistry, or physics, or mineralogy, and nothing else under the sun; to this they add their only knowledge of any other kind, that is to say, the little they may remember of the doctrines of their school catechism, and when they find that these two elements will not harmonize, they straightway turn scoffers at religion, and soon become shallow and absurd materialists. They may, perhaps, have heard at college of a Plato and an Aristotle, of a Locke and especially of a Kant; but as these folks never handled crucibles and retorts, or even stuffed a monkey, they do not esteem them worthy of further acquaintance. They prefer calmly to toss out of the window the intellectual labor of two thousand years and treat the public to a philosophy concocted out of their own rich mental resources on the basis of the catechism on the one hand, and on that of crucibles and retorts or the catalogues of monkeys on the other. They ought to be told in plain language that they are ignoramuses, who have much to learn before they can be allowed to have any voice in the matter. Every one, in fact, who dogmatizes at random, with the naive realism of a child on such matters as God, the soul, the world's origin, atoms, etc., is simply one of the vulgar. Send him to the servants' hall, where his wisdom will best find a market." Will in Nature, Preface (Second ed.) The principal advantage of a thorough acquaintance with the principles established by Aristotle, Locke, Kant, and others, is that the essential laws of logic are thus to be mastered, and we do not find ourselves attempting to demonstrate one theory by evidences which argue to another, quite different in significance, although assuming some of the same facts and conditions. Vet, a if Schopenhauer had really "sized up" the thought of the present day, we will find, unmistakably and undeniably, that the hypothesis of evolution, the foundation of the "glorious hopes" and delectabl ! consummations, so clear to our modern "liberal" dogmatists and irrational "rationalists," is based on sophistry of the rankest type and on an essential ignorance of the simplest laws of logic. Now, in making an analysis of this so-called "doctrine," there are several things to be carefully considered. In the first place, in the writings of the most prominent "evolutionists" the word "evolution" is evidently used in two essentially different senses: first, as an evident synonym for the word "development" or biological variation in any sense second, to designate the hypothesis ; that organic forms, from the lowest to the highest, have been produced by a process of growth, analogous to the development of an egg into a bird, from the lowest and simplest form possible, the unicellular amceboid protoplasm, which, as supposed, was the earliest life-form in this world. In the second place, all the facts, apparent facts or alleged facts while arguing for variation in form, do not argue for the philosophical dogma of organic evolution with any certainty or consistency; while the main allegations upon which this dogma is erected are, simply speaking, not true. In the third place, while no one can deny the fact of variation 1044 IMPROVEMENT ERA who has any knowledge of the science of breeding domestic cattle, has ever thought of the numerous varieties of dogs, pigeons or human beings, or who has ever heard of Burbank and his researches in the practical production of new breeds of vegetable life; and, while, in default of precise knowledge of limits in pos- sibility, we do not know whether variations could be carried so far as to produce a real "species," the fact remains that there is no evidence in nature of a "progressive development" from simple to complex, nor the slightest warrant for the notion of a "steadv growth from imperfection to perfection, from ungood into good." In the fourth place, the greater bulk of the evidences advanced for the evolution hypothesis, and confidently urged in its support, do not argue to an advance from the simple to the complex, from the imperfect to the perfect. We may insist, without fear of successful contradiction, that they argue definitely that, except in minor details of adjustment to new environments, etc., the majority of alleged proved variations of life-forms are real "degradations" in structure, rather than improvements, or that such improvements as may be alleged are, in general, achieved at the expense of other organs and functions. This fact is seen in the alleged development of our one-toed horse from the three-toed miohippus of the Miocene period, the four-toed orohippus of the Eocene period, and the still earlier reported form with the normal five toes. Such advantages in size, speed and superior dentition as may have been achieved, meanwhile, are accompanied by a parallel mutilation of the typical mammalian hand, until it becomes a mere one-fingered support or pedestal, devoid of further possibilities of improvement in the primal "plan" of the type of handed animals. If the development of the modern horse from a primitive fivetoed animal be admitted as fully as possible, it is perfectly evident that it establishes the fact of variation, and not of organic evolution in the Spencerian sense since the process by which ; a five-toed animal may beget remote descendants having but one toe on each foot positively furnishes no clue whatever to the still more primitive, but, as yet wholly supposititious process, by which the mammalian hand with its typical equipment of five fingers was originally eventuated. A moment's reflection will show this, also the great difference between a progress upward in the scale, and a progress downward, in any particular. Nature is full of good presumptive evidences of degradation, but is singularly churlish in similarly good "exhibits" on developmental improvements. The whale, alleged to be descended from a true land animal, has gained his ability to live in the water, as assumed, and to propel himself by the great expanse of his tail, by the total loss of his hinder limbs, of which no suggestion remains save a rudimentary pelvis. The fact that rudimentary teeth are said to be found in the jaws of very young whales, and that they are subse- THE EVOLUTION HYPOTHESIS I04S quently supplanted by the baleen, is only further evidence of the same import, since the process in course of which hind limbs and teeth disappear is positively not typical of the supposed pr< by which they were first devloped. Tt will be unnecessary to discuss here the essential improbability that any such animal as a whale was gradually developed from a normal four-legged land mammal; or even to remind the reader that the geological record furnishes no indications of "intermediate types." It will also be unnecessary to insist that the several types of two, three, and fourtoed horses differ among themselves even more than do the modern dog, with four tracking toes on each foot, and the modern fox with five tracking toes on the front feet and four on the rear. No one has as yet suggested the lineal relationship of dogs and foxes. It would be just to sav. however, th^t e n<*h ann^rp^tl"" misplaced arguments as those applying to horses and whales were injected into evolutionary literature for the purpose of combatting the arguments of unscientific and slovenlv advocates of "special creation" who committed the blunder of d«»m«ngr t 11 - pctr» a tftv of variation of any degree, under natural conditions. Consequently, in the mind of Huxley, and other defenders of the evolution hypothesis, such "evidences of variation" were brought forward as subsidiary arguments, although repeatedly used by others as direct arguments. At the present day, however, they cannot be used even in a subsidiary significance. With all the wealth of effort that has been expended in the development of the "development hypothesis." there is to this very day a most significant absence of true intermediate types "links," so called— between the great natural divisions of living things. If. as evolutonists suppose, all life-forms have been gradually developed from primitive and simple tvpes. and the process — has occupied immense periods of time for these people talk of millions of years, just as our exponents of "high finance" talk of millions of dollars— it would be only probable that many such "links" should have been unearthed. Nor, in view of the vast periods of time mentioned, can the "imperfection of the geological record" be urged as a sufficient explanation. This does not mean that there are no forms of indeterminate character between orders or phyla. There are, indeed, many such, although not in the line of alleged direct descent. Several animals, those included in the order Monotrcmata. both structurally and functionally, suggest birdlike qualities there were in geological times birdlike reptiles ; and reptile-like birds, also birds with teeth and reptiles with beaks there are today viviparous fish, that bring forth their young alive, and egg-laying animals that appear to be mammals ^ there is a fishlike marine animal, the amphioxus or lancelet, which suggests both vertebrate and invertebrate forms, but wheh is evidently neither the one nor the other consistently — it has no true back- 1046 IMPROVEMENT ERA bone. Now, a casual student of zoologv and paleontology might see in these, and similar indeterminate forms, true "links" in the orderly chain of development, but they are not so accepted by competent anatomists, notably Professor Huxley himself. They are, in fact, what Huxley calls "intercalary types ;" which is to say, exceptional, irregular, ununiform, in the sense in which the "intercalary days" were formerly placed at the end of every several years to round out the defective ancient calendar, although not properly in the year. Speaking of several of the most hopeful examples of these "intercalary types," the Anoplotherium "in- — termediate in character between the pigs, on the one hand, and the ruminants on the other" — the Paleothcrium — which "similarly tended to connect together animals to all appearance so different as the rhinoceros, the horse and the tapir" — — and the Archeopteryx "which, to a certain extent, occupies a midway place between a bird and a reptile" —he has the following: "Like the Anoblotherium and the Paleotheriuin. * * * Archeopteryx tends to fill up the interval between groups which, in the existing world, are widely separated, and to destroy the definitions of zoological groups based upon our knowledge of existing forms. And such cases as these constitute evidence in favor of evolution, in so far as they prove that, in former periods of the world's history, there were animals which overstepped the bounds of e'xisting groups, and tended to m°rge them into larger assemblages. Thev show that animal org/rrzation is more flexible than our knowledge of recent forms might have led us to believe; and that many structural permutations and combinations, of which the present world gives us no indication, may nevertheless have existed. "But it bv no means follows, because the Paleotheriuin has much in common with the Horse, on the one hand, anrl with the fthinn'-^ros on the other, that it is the intermediate form through which Rhinoceroses have passed to become Horses, or vie versa: on *he r.o 1"'. trary, anv puch supposition would certainly be erroneous. Nor do I think it likely that the transition from the reptile to the bird has been effected bv srch a form as Archeopteryx. And it is conven-'ent to distinguish these intermediate forms between two groups, which do not represent the actual passage from the one Troun to the other, as intercalary types, from those linear types which, more or less approximately, indicate the nature of the stens by which the transition from one group to the other was effected. "I conceive that such linear forms, constituting a series of natural gradations between the reptile and the bird, and enabling us to understand the manner in which the reptilian has been metamorphosed into the bird type, are really to be found among a gronn of ancient and extinct terrestrial reptiles known as the Ornithoscelida. The remains of these animals occur throughout the series of the Mesozoic formations, from the Tri?is to the Chalk, and there are indications of their existence even in the later Paleozoic strata. "Most of these reptiles at present known are of great size, some havirjj* n**->ii-e. i a length of forty feet or oerhaps more. , Th<= maiorit-" resembled lizards and crocodiles in their general form, and many of them were, like crocodile*, protected by an armor of heavy bony plates. Rut, in others, the hind limbs elongate and the fore limbs THE EVOLUTION HYPOTHESIS 1047 shorten, until their relative proportions approach those which arc observed in the short-winged, flightless, ostrich tribe among birds. The skull is relatively light, and in some cases the jaws, though bearing teeth, are beaklike at their extremities and appear to have been enveloped in a horny sheath. In the part of the vertebral column which lies between the haunch bones and is called the sacrum, a number of vertebrae may unite together into one whole, and in this respect as in some details of its structure, the sacrum of these reptilesapproaches that of birds. "But it is in the structure of the pelvis and of the hind limb that some of these ancient reptiles present the most remarkable approximation to birds, and clearly indicate the way by which the most spcralized and characteristic features of the bird may have been evolved from the corresponding parts in the reptile." Lectures on Evolution, II. It is notable that this discussion really constitutes a full confession of the essential weakness of the evolution hypothesis as an explanation of nature. First, it rejects, on excellent anatomical grounds that the "hopeful links" mentioned are linear, although insisting, without warrant, except in evolutionary premises, that they evidence change in tvr»e. Second, it proposes as true linear tvnes certain reptiles with birdlike features, although these resemble most closely the flightless, ostrich-like birds, which, on developmental theory must be degraded types, having lost the power of flight, although having perfectly formed wings. Third, it utterly forgets that the bird's wing forms a serious obstacle to developmental explanation, as will be explained later. Cheerful Thoughts I am going to think cheerful thoughts today. I am going to pleasantly say what I say, And to smile whatsoever I'm doing. T am going to send out the thought-waves of cheer To aid ev'ry person, afar or anear, To lighten their burdens, and banish their fear With the gladness of life I'm renewing. T am going to make myself glad today By repeating the musical tones of a lay That is singing the heart-joy of living. And through all the kind hours I'll have joy in the choice Of the sweetest inflections, according my voice To the thought, and the word, while my heart shall rejoice In the cheer of receiving and giving. I am going to say a few words today. (Inst a mote of psychology, by the way) Or. better perhaps, a suggestion: Our lives are all cast 'neath society's spell; own hell We make our own heaven, and make our may arc thinking, and what we By what we tell, "And th's is the truth beyond question. MT PLEASANT UTAH JOSEPH LONGKING ToWNSEND