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furnished the key to the whole problem, but that key is now rather generally discarded. The
foundation pillars, on which the Darwinian structure was reared, such as the principle of use
and disuse, the struggle for existence, natural selection, and the transmission of acquired
characteristics, have been removed one after another. Such evolutionists as Weissmann, De
Vries, Mendel, and Bateson, all contributed to the collapse of the Darwinian edifice.
Nordenskioeld, in his History of Biology, speaks of the “dissolution of Darwinism” as an
established fact. Dennert calls us to the deathbed of Darwinism, and O’Toole says, “Darwinism
is dead, and no grief of mourners can resuscitate the corpse.” Morton speaks of “the
bankruptcy of evolution,” and Price of the “phantom of organic evolution.” Darwinism, then,
has admittedly failed to explain the origin of species, and evolutionists have not been able to
offer a better explanation. The Mendelian law accounts for variations, but not for the origin of
new species. It really points away from the development of new species by a natural process.
Some are of the opinion that the mutation theory of De Vries or Lloyd Morgan’s theory of
emergent evolution points the way, but neither one of these has proved to be a successful
explanation of the origin of species by natural development pure and simple. It is now admitted
that the mutants of De Vries are varietal rather than specific, and cannot be regarded as the
beginnings of new species. And Morgan feels constrained to admit that he cannot explain his
emergents without falling back upon some creative power that might be called God. Morton
says: “The fact is that, besides creation, there is not even a theory of origins to hold the field
today.”[The Bankruptcy of Evolution, p. 182.]
The hypothesis of evolution fails at several points. It cannot explain the origin of life.
Evolutionists sought its explanation in spontaneous generation, an unproved assumption, which
is now discredited. It is a well established fact in science that life can only come from
antecedent life. Further, it has failed utterly to adduce a single example of one species
producing another distinct (organic as distinguished from varietal) species. Bateson said in
1921: “We cannot see how the differentiation in species came about. Variations of many kinds,
often considerable, we daily witness, but no origin of species. . . . Meanwhile, though our faith
in evolution stands unshaken, we have no acceptable account of the origin of species.”[Science,
Jan. 20, 1922.] Neither has evolution been able successfully to cope with the problems
presented by the origin of man. It has not even succeeded in proving the physical descent of
man from the brute. J. A. Thomson, author of The Outline of Science and a leading evolutionist,
holds that man really never was an animal, a fierce beastly looking creature, but that the first
man sprang suddenly, by a big leap, from the primate stock into a human being. Much less has
it been able to explain the psychical side of man’s life. The human soul, endowed with
intelligence, self-consciousness, freedom, conscience, and religious aspirations, remains an
unsolved enigma.