THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT CREATION

EVOLUTION AND DOGMA

EXPLANATION OF PLATE I

GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE VERTEBRATES

Plate I.

View Larger Image Here.

LAST WORDS ON EVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT CREATION

EVOLUTION AND DOGMA

The controversy over the idea of evolution is a prominent feature in the mental life of the nineteenth century. It is true that a few great thinkers had spoken of a natural evolution of all things several thousand years ago. They had, indeed, partly investigated the laws that control the birth and death of the world, and the rise of the earth and its inhabitants; even the creation-stories and the myths of the older religions betray a partial influence of these evolutionary ideas. But it was not until the nineteenth century that the idea of evolution took definite shape and was scientifically grounded on various classes of evidence; and it was not until the last third of the century that it won general recognition. The intimate connection that was proved to exist between all branches of knowledge, once the continuity of historical development was realised, and the union of them all through the Monistic philosophy, are achievements of the last few decades.

The great majority of the older ideas that thoughtful men had formed on the origin and nature of the world and their own frame were far removed from the notion of "self-development." They culminated in more or less obscure creation-myths, which generally put in the foreground the idea of a personal Creator. Just as man has used intelligence and design in the making of his weapons and tools, his houses and his boats, so it was thought that the Creator had fashioned the world with art and intelligence, according to a definite plan. Among the many legends of this kind the ancient Semitic story of creation, familiar to us as the Mosaic narrative, but drawn for the most part from Babylonian sources, has obtained a very great influence on European culture owing to the general acceptance of the Bible. The belief in miracles, that is involved in these religious legends, was bound to come in conflict, at an early date, with the evolutionary ideas of independent philosophical research. On the one hand, in the prevalent religious teaching, we had the supernatural world, the miraculous, teleology: on the other hand, in the nascent science of evolution, only natural law, pure reason, mechanical causality. Every step that was made by this science brought into greater relief its inconsistency with the predominant religion.[1]

If we glance for a moment at the various fields in which the idea of evolution is scientifically applied we find that, firstly, the whole universe is conceived as a unity; secondly, our earth; thirdly, organic life on the earth; fourthly, man, as its highest product; and fifthly, the soul, as a special immaterial entity. Thus we have, in historical succession, the evolutionary research of cosmology, geology, biology, anthropology, and psychology.

The first comprehensive idea of cosmological evolution was put forth by the famous critical philosopher Immanuel Kant, in 1755, in the great work of his earlier years, General Natural History of the Heavens, or an Attempt to Conceive and to Explain the Origin of the Universe mechanically, according to the Newtonian Laws. This remarkable work appeared anonymously, and was dedicated to Frederick the Great, who, however, never saw it. It was little noticed, and was soon entirely forgotten, until it was exhumed ninety years afterwards by Alexander von Humboldt. Note particularly that on the title-page stress is laid on the mechanical origin of the world and its explanation on Newtonian principles; in this way the strictly Monistic character of the whole cosmogony and the absolutely universal rule of natural law are clearly expressed. It is true that Kant speaks much in it of God and his wisdom and omnipotence; but this is limited to the affirmation that God created once for all the unchangeable laws of nature, and was henceforward bound by them and only able to work through them. The Dualism which became so pronounced subsequently in the philosopher of Koenigsberg counts for very little here.

The idea of a natural development of the world occurs in a clearer and more consistent form, and is provided with a firm mathematical basis, forty years afterwards, in the remarkable MÉcanique CÉleste of Pierre Laplace. His popular Exposition du SystÈme du Monde (1796) destroyed at its roots the legend of creation that had hitherto prevailed, or the Mosaic narrative in the Bible. Laplace, who had become Minister of the Interior, Count, and Chancellor of the Senate, under Napoleon, was merely honourable and consistent when he replied to the emperor's question, "What room there was for God in his system?": "Sire, I had no need for that unfounded hypothesis." What strange ministers there are sometimes![2] The shrewdness of the Church soon recognised that the personal Creator was dethroned, and the creation-myth destroyed, by this Monistic and now generally received theory of cosmic development. Nevertheless it maintained towards it the attitude which it had taken up 250 years earlier in regard to the closely related and irrefutable system of Copernicus. It endeavoured to conceal the truth as long as possible, or to oppose it with Jesuitical methods, and finally it yielded. If the Churches now silently admit the Copernican system and the cosmogony of Laplace and have ceased to oppose them, we must attribute the fact, partly to a feeling of their spiritual impotence, partly to an astute calculation that the ignorant masses do not reflect on these great problems.

In order to obtain a clear idea and a firm conviction of this cosmic evolution by natural law, the eternal birth and death of millions of suns and stars, one needs some mathematical training and a lively imagination, as well as a certain competence in astronomy and physics. The evolutionary process is much simpler, and more readily grasped in geology. Every shower of rain or wave of the sea, every volcanic eruption and every pebble, gives us a direct proof of the changes that are constantly taking place on the surface of our planet. However, the historical significance of these changes was not properly appreciated until 1822, by Karl von Hoff of Gotha, and modern geology was only founded in 1830 by Charles Lyell, who explained the whole origin and composition of the solid crust of the earth, the formation of the mountains, and the periods of the earth's development, in a connected system by natural laws. From the immense thickness of the stratified rocks, which contain the fossilised remains of extinct organisms, we discovered the enormous length—running into millions of years—of the periods during which these sedimentary rocks were deposited in water. Even the duration of the organic history of the earth—that is to say, the period during which the plant and animal population of our planet was developing—must itself be put at more than a hundred million years. These results of geology and paleontology destroyed the current legend of the six days' work of a personal Creator. Many attempts were made, it is true, and are still being made, to reconcile the Mosaic supernatural story of creation with modern geology.[3] All these efforts of believers are in vain. We may say, in fact, that it is precisely the study of geology, the reflection it entails on the enormous periods of evolution, and the habit of seeking the simple mechanical causes of their constant changes, that contribute very considerably to the advance of enlightenment. Yet in spite of this (or, possibly, because of this), geological instruction is either greatly neglected or entirely suppressed in most schools. It is certainly eminently calculated (in connection with geography) to enlarge the mind, and acquaint the child with the idea of evolution. An educated person who knows the elements of geology will never experience ennui. He will find everywhere in surrounding nature, in the rocks and in the water, in the desert and on the mountains, the most instructive stimuli to reflection.

The evolutionary process in organic nature is much more difficult to grasp. Here we must distinguish two different series of biological development, which have only been brought into proper causal connection by means of our biogenetic law (1866); one series is found in embryology (or ontogeny), the other in phylogeny (or race-development). In Germany "evolution" always meant embryology, or a part of the whole, until forty years ago. It stood for a microscopic examination of the wonderful processes by means of which the elaborate structure of the plant or animal body is formed from the simple seed of the plant or the egg of the bird. Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the erroneous view was generally received that this marvellously complicated structure existed, completely formed, in the simple ovum, and that the various organs had merely to grow and to shape themselves independently by a process of "evolution" (or unfolding), before they entered into activity. An able German scientist, Caspar Friedrich Wolff (son of a Berlin tailor), had already shown the error of this "pre-formation theory" in 1759. He had proved, in his dissertation for the doctorate, that no trace of the later body, of its bones, muscles, nerves, and feathers, can be found in the hen's egg (the commonest and most convenient object for study), but merely a small round disk, consisting of two thin superimposed layers. He had further showed that the various organs are only built up gradually out of these simple elements, and that we can trace, step by step, a series of real new growths. However, these momentous discoveries, and the sound "theory of epigenesis" that he based on them, were wholly ignored for fifty years, and even rejected by the leading authorities. It was not until Oken had re-discovered these important facts at Jena (1806), Pander had more carefully distinguished the germinal layers (1817), and finally Carl Ernst von Baer had happily combined observation and reflection in his classical Animal Embryology (1828), that embryology attained the rank of an independent science with a sound empirical base.

A little later it secured a well-merited recognition in botany also, especially owing to the efforts of Matthias Schleiden of Jena, the distinguished student who provided biology with a new foundation in the "cell theory" (1838). But it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that people generally recognised that the ovum of the plant or animal is itself only a simple cell, and that the later tissues and organs gradually develop from this "elementary organism" by a repeated cleavage of, and division of labour in, the cells. The most important step was then made of recognising that our human organism also develops from an ovum (first discovered by Baer in 1827), in virtue of the same laws, and that its embryonic development resembles that of the other mammals, especially that of the ape. Each of us was, at the beginning of his existence, a simple globule of protoplasm, surrounded by a membrane, about 1 120 of an inch in diameter, with a firmer nucleus inside it. These important embryological discoveries confirmed the rational conception of the human organism that had been attained much earlier by comparative anatomy: the conviction that the human frame is built in the same way, and develops similarly from a simple ovum, as the body of all other mammals. Even LinnÉ had already (1735) given man a place in the mammal class in his famous System of Nature.

Differently from these embryological facts, which can be directly observed, the phenomena of phylogeny (the development of species), which are needed to set the former in their true light, are usually outside the range of immediate observation. What was the origin of the countless species of animals and plants? How can we explain the remarkable relationships which unite similar species into genera and these into classes? LinnÉ answers the question very simply with the belief in creation, relying on the generally accepted Mosaic narrative: "There are as many different species of animals and plants as there were different forms created by God in the beginning." The first scientific answer was given in 1809 by the great French scientist, Lamarck. He taught, in his suggestive Philosophie Zoologique, that the resemblances in form and structure of groups of species are due to real affinity, and that all organisms descend from a few very simple primitive forms (or, possibly, from a single one). These primitive forms were developed out of lifeless matter by spontaneous generation. The resemblances of related groups of species are explained by inheritance from common stem-forms; their dissimilarities are due to adaptation to different environments, and to variety in the action of the modifiable organs. The human race has arisen in the same way, by transformation of a series of mammal ancestors, the nearest of which are ape-like primates.

These great ideas of Lamarck, which threw light on the whole field of organic life, and were closely approached by Goethe in his own speculations, gave rise to the theory that we now know as transformism, or the theory of evolution or descent. But the far-seeing Lamarck was—as Caspar Friedrich Wolff had been fifty years before—half a century before his time. His theory obtained no recognition, and was soon wholly forgotten.

It was brought into the light once more in 1859 by the genius of Charles Darwin, who had been born in the very year that the Philosophie Zoologique was published. The substance and the success of his system, which has gone by the name of Darwinism (in the wider sense) for forty-six years, are so generally known that I need not dwell on them. I will only point out that the great success of Darwin's epoch-making works is due to two causes: firstly, to the fact that the English scientist most ingeniously worked up the empirical material that had accumulated during fifty years into a systematic proof of the theory of descent; and secondly, to the fact that he gave it the support of a second theory of his own, the theory of natural selection. This theory, which gives a causal explanation of the transformation of species, is what we ought to call "Darwinism" in the strict sense. We cannot go here into the question how far this theory is justified, or how far it is corrected by more recent theories, such as Weismann's theory of germ-plasm (1844), or De Vries's theory of mutations (1900). Our concern is rather with the unparalleled influence that Darwinism, and its application to man, have had during the last forty years on the whole province of science; and at the same time, with its irreconcilable opposition to the dogmas of the Churches.

The extension of the theory of evolution to man was, naturally, one of the most interesting and momentous applications of it. If all other organisms arose, not by a miraculous creation, but by a natural modification of earlier forms of life, the presumption is that the human race also was developed by the transformation of the most man-like mammals, the primates of LinnÉ—the apes and lemurs. This natural inference, which Lamarck had drawn in his simple way, but Darwin had at first explicitly avoided, was first thoroughly established by the gifted zoologist, Thomas Huxley, in his three lectures on Man's Place in Nature (1863). He showed that this "question of questions" is unequivocally answered by three chief witnesses—the natural history of the anthropoid apes, the anatomic and embryological relations of man to the animals immediately below him, and the recently discovered fossil human remains. Darwin entirely accepted these conclusions of his friend eight years afterwards, and, in his two-volume work, The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection (1871), furnished a number of new proofs in support of the dreaded "descent of man from the ape." I myself then (1874) completed the task I had begun in 1866, of determining approximately the whole series of the extinct animal ancestors of the human race, on the ground of comparative anatomy, embryology, and paleontology. This attempt was improved, as our knowledge advanced, in the five editions of my Evolution of Man. In the last twenty years a vast literature on the subject has accumulated. I must assume that you are acquainted with the contents of one or other of these works, and will turn to the question, that especially engages our attention at present, how the inevitable struggle between these momentous achievements of modern science and the dogmas of the Churches has run in recent years.

It was obvious that both the general theory of evolution and its extension to man in particular must meet from the first with the most determined resistance on the part of the Churches. Both were in flagrant contradiction to the Mosaic story of creation, and other Biblical dogmas that were involved in it, and are still taught in our elementary schools. It is creditable to the shrewdness of the theologians and their associates, the metaphysicians, that they at once rejected Darwinism, and made a particularly energetic resistance in their writings to its chief consequence, the descent of man from the ape. This resistance seemed the more justified and hopeful as, for seven or eight years after Darwin's appearance, few biologists accepted his theory, and the general attitude amongst them was one of cold scepticism. I can well testify to this from my own experience. When I first openly advocated Darwin's theory at a scientific congress at Stettin in 1863, I was almost alone, and was blamed by the great majority for taking up seriously so fantastic a theory, "the dream of an after-dinner nap," as the GÖttinger zoologist, Keferstein, called it.

The general attitude towards Nature fifty years ago was so different from that we find everywhere to-day, that it is difficult to convey a clear idea of it to a young scientist or philosopher. The great question of creation, the problem how the various species of plants and animals came into the world, and how man came into being, did not exist yet in exact science. There was, in fact, no question of it.

Seventy-seven years ago Alexander von Humboldt delivered, in this very spot, the lectures which afterwards made up his famous work, Cosmos, the Elements of a Physical Description of the World. As he touched, in passing, the obscure problem of the origin of the organic population of our planet, he could only say resignedly: "The mysterious and unsolved problem of how things came to be does not belong to the empirical province of objective research, the description of what is." It is instructive to find Johannes MÜller, the greatest of German biologists in the nineteenth century, speaking thus in 1852, in his famous essay, "On the Generation of Snails in Holothurians": "The entrance of various species of animals into creation is certain—it is a fact of paleontology; but it is supernatural as long as this entrance cannot be perceived in the act and become an element of observation." I myself had a number of remarkable conversations with MÜller, whom I put at the head of all my distinguished teachers, in the summer of 1854. His lectures on comparative anatomy and physiology—the most illuminating and stimulating I ever heard—had captivated me to such an extent that I asked and obtained his permission to make a closer study of the skeletons and other preparations in his splendid museum of comparative anatomy (then in the right wing of the buildings of the Berlin University), and to draw them. MÜller (then in his fifty-fourth year) used to spend the Sunday afternoon alone in the museum. He would walk to and fro for hours in the spacious rooms, his hands behind his back, buried in thought about the mysterious affinities of the vertebrates, the "holy enigma" of which was so forcibly impressed by the row of skeletons. Now and again my great master would turn to a small table at the side, at which I (a student of twenty years) was sitting in the angle of a window, making conscientious drawings of the skulls of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.

I would then beg him to explain particularly difficult points in anatomy, and once I ventured to put the question: "Must not all these vertebrates, with their identity in internal skeleton, in spite of all their external differences, have come originally from a common form?" The great master nodded his head thoughtfully, and said: "Ah, if we only knew that! If ever you solve that riddle, you will have accomplished a supreme work." Two months afterwards, in September, 1854, I had to accompany MÜller to Heligoland, and learned under his direction the beautiful and wonderful inhabitants of the sea. As we fished together in the sea, and caught the lovely medusÆ, I asked him how it was possible to explain their remarkable alternation of generations; if the medusÆ, from the ova of which polyps develop to-day, must not have come originally from the more simply organised polyps? To this precocious question, I received the same resigned answer: "Ah, that is a very obscure problem! We know nothing whatever about the origin of species."

Johannes MÜller was certainly one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century. He takes rank with Cuvier, Baer, Lamarck, and Darwin. His insight was profound and penetrating, his philosophic judgment comprehensive, and his mastery of the vast province of biology was enormous. Emil du Bois-Reymond happily compared him, in his fine commemorative address, to Alexander the Great, whose kingdom was divided into several independent realms at his death. In his lectures and works MÜller treated no less than four different subjects, for which four separate chairs were founded after his death in 1858—human anatomy, physiology, pathological anatomy, and comparative anatomy. In fact, we ought really to add two more subjects—zoology and embryology. Of these, also, we learned more from MÜller's classic lectures than from the official lectures of the professors of those subjects. The great master died in 1858, a few months before Charles Darwin and Alfred R. Wallace made their first communications on their new theory of selection in the Journal of the LinnÆan Society. I do not doubt in the least that this surprising answer of the riddle of creation would have profoundly moved MÜller, and have been fully admitted by him on mature reflection.

To these leading masters in biology, and to all other anatomists, physiologists, zoologists, and botanists up to 1858, the question of organic creation was an unsolved problem; the great majority regarded it as insoluble. The theologians and their allies, the metaphysicians, built triumphantly on this fact. It afforded a clear proof of the limitations of reason and science. A miracle only could account for the origin of these ingenious and carefully designed organisms; nothing less than the Divine wisdom and omnipotence could have brought man into being. But this general resignation of reason, and the dominance of supernatural ideas which it encouraged, were somewhat paradoxical in the thirty years between Lyell and Darwin, between 1830 and 1859, since the natural evolution of the earth, as conceived by the great geologist, had come to be universally recognised. Since the earlier of these dates the iron necessity of natural law had ruled in inorganic nature, in the formation of the mountains and the movement of the heavenly bodies. In organic nature, on the contrary, in the creation and the life of animals and plants, people saw only the wisdom and power of an intelligent Creator and Controller; in other words, everything was ruled by mechanical causality in the inorganic world, but by teleological finality in the realm of biology.

Philosophy, strictly so called, paid little or no attention to this dilemma. Absorbed almost exclusively in metaphysical and dialectical speculations, it looked with supreme contempt or indifference on the enormous progress that the empirical sciences were making. It affected, in its character of "purely mental science," to build up the world out of its own head, and to have no need of the splendid material that was being laboriously gathered by observation and experiment. This is especially true of Germany, where Hegel's system of "absolute idealism" had secured the highest regard, particularly since it had been made obligatory as "the royal State-philosophy of Prussia"—mainly because, according to Hegel, "in the State the Divine will itself and the monarchical constitution alone represent the development of reason; all other forms of constitution are lower stages of the development of reason." Hegel's abstruse metaphysics has also been greatly appreciated because it has made so thorough and consistent a use of the idea of evolution. But this pretended "evolution of reason" floated far above real nature in the pure ether of the absolute spirit, and was devoid of all the material ballast that the empirical science of the evolution of the world, the earth, and its living population, had meantime accumulated. Moreover, it is well known how Hegel himself declared, with humorous resignation, that only one of his many pupils had understood him, and this one had misunderstood him.

From the higher standpoint of general culture the difficult question forces itself on us: What is the real value of the idea of evolution in the whole realm of science? We are bound to answer that it varies considerably. The facts of the evolution of the individual, or of ontogeny, were easy to observe and grasp: the evolution of the crust of the earth and of the mountains in geology seemed to have an equally sound empirical foundation; the physical evolution of the universe seemed to be established by mathematical speculation. There was no longer any serious question of creation, in the literal sense, of the deliberate action of a personal Creator, in these great provinces. But this made people cling to the idea more than ever in regard to the origin of the countless species of animals and plants, and especially the creation of man. This transcendental problem seemed to be entirely beyond the range of natural development; and the same was thought of the question of the nature and origin of the soul, the mystic entity that was appropriated by metaphysical speculation as its subject. Charles Darwin suddenly brought a clear light into this dark chaos of contradictory notions in 1859. His epoch-making work, The Origin of Species, proved convincingly that this historical process is not a supernatural mystery, but a physiological phenomenon; and that the preservation of improved races in the struggle for life had produced, by a natural evolution, the whole wondrous world of organic life.

To-day, when evolution is almost universally recognised in biology, when thousands of anatomic and physiological works are based on it every year, the new generation can hardly form an idea of the violent resistance that was offered to Darwin's theory and the impassioned struggles it provoked. In the first place, the Churches at once raised a vigorous protest; they rightly regarded their new antagonist as the deadly enemy of the legend of creation, and saw the very foundations of their creed threatened. The Churches found a powerful ally in the dualistic metaphysics that still claims to represent the real "idealist philosophy" at most universities. But most dangerous of all to the young theory was the violent resistance it met almost everywhere in its own province of empirical science. The prevailing belief in the fixity and the independent creation of the various species was much more seriously menaced by Darwin's theory than it had been by Lamarck's transformism. Lamarck had said substantially the same thing fifty years before, but had failed to convince through the lack of effective evidence. Many scientists, some of great distinction, opposed Darwin because either they had not an adequate acquaintance with the whole field of biology, or it seemed to them that his bold speculation advanced too far from the secure base of experience.

When Darwin's work appeared in 1859, and fell like a flash of lightning on the dark world of official biology, I was engaged in a scientific expedition to Sicily and taken up with a thorough study of the graceful radiolarians, those wonderful microscopic marine animals that surpass all other organisms in the beauty and variety of their forms. The special study of this remarkable class of animals, of which I afterwards described more than 4,000 species, after more than ten years of research, provided me with one of the solid foundation-stones of my Darwinian ideas. But when I returned from Messina to Berlin in the spring of 1860, I knew nothing as yet of Darwin's achievement. I merely heard from my friends at Berlin that a remarkable work by a crazy Englishman had attracted great attention, and that it turned upside down all previous ideas as to the origin of species.

I soon perceived that almost all the experts at Berlin—chief amongst them were the famous microscopist, Ehrenberg; the anatomist, Reichert; the zoologist, Peters; and the geologist, Beyrich—were unanimous in their condemnation of Darwin. The brilliant orator of the Berlin Academy, Emil du Bois-Reymond, hesitated. He recognised that the theory of evolution was the only natural solution of the problem of creation; but he laughed at the application of it as a poor romance, and declared that the phylogenetic inquiries into the relationship of the various species had about as much value as the research of philologists into the genealogical tree of the Homeric heroes. The distinguished botanist, Alexander Braun, stood quite alone in his full and warm assent to the theory of evolution. I found comfort and encouragement with this dear and respected teacher, when I was deeply moved by the first reading of Darwin's book, and soon completely converted to his views. In Darwin's great and harmonious conception of Nature, and his convincing establishment of evolution, I had an answer to all the doubts that had beset me since the beginning of my biological studies.

My famous teacher, Rudolf Virchow, whom I had met at WÜrtzburg in 1852, and was soon associated with in the most friendly relations as special pupil and admiring assistant, played a very curious part in this great controversy. I am, I think, one of those elderly men who have followed Virchow's development, as man and thinker, with the greatest interest during the last fifty years. I distinguish three periods in his psychological metamorphoses. In the first decade of his academic life, from 1847 to 1858, mainly at WÜrtzburg, he effected the great reform of medicine that culminated brilliantly in his cellular pathology. In the following twenty years (1858-1877) he was chiefly occupied with politics and anthropology. He was at first favourable to Darwinism, then sceptical, and finally rejected it. His powerful and determined opposition to it dates from 1877, when, in is famous speech on "The Freedom of Science in the Modern State," he struck a heavy blow at that freedom, denounced the theory of evolution as dangerous to the State, and demanded its exclusion from the schools. This remarkable metamorphosis is so important, and has had so much influence, yet has been so erroneously described, that I will deal with it somewhat fully in the next chapter, especially as I have then to treat one chief problem, the descent of man from the ape. For the moment, I will merely recall the fact that in Berlin, the "metropolis of intelligence," as it has been called, the theory of evolution, now generally accepted, met with a more stubborn resistance than in most of our other leading educational centres, and that this opposition was due above all to the powerful authority of Virchow.

We can only glance briefly here at the victorious struggle that the idea of evolution has conducted in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The violent resistance that Darwinism encountered nearly everywhere in its early years was paralysed towards the end of the first decade. In the years 1866-1874 many works were published in which not only were the foundations of the theory scientifically strengthened, but its general recognition was secured by popular treatment of the subject. I made the first attempt in 1866, in my General Morphology, to present connectedly the whole subject of evolution and make it the foundation of a consistent Monistic philosophy; and I then gave a popular summary of my chief conclusions in the ten editions of my History of Creation. In my Evolution of Man I made the first attempt to apply the principles of evolution thoroughly and consistently to man, and to draw up a hypothetical list of his animal ancestors. The three volumes of my Systematic Phylogeny (1894-1896) contain a fuller outline of a natural classification of organisms on the basis of their stem-history. There have been important contributions to the science of evolution in all its branches in the Darwinian periodical, Cosmos, since 1877; and a number of admirable popular works helped to spread the system.

However, the most important and most welcome advance was made by science when, in the last thirty years, the idea of evolution penetrated into every branch of biology, and was recognised as fundamental and indispensable. Thousands of new discoveries and observations in all sections of botany, zoology, protistology, and anthropology, were brought forward as empirical evidence of evolution. This is especially true of the remarkable progress of paleontology, comparative anatomy, and embryology, but it applies also to physiology, chorology (the science of the distribution of living things), and oecology (the description of the habits of animals). How much our horizon was extended by these, and how much the unity of our Monistic system gained, can be seen in any modern manual of biology. If we compare them with those that gave us extracts of natural history forty or fifty years ago, we see at once what an enormous advance has taken place. Even the more remote branches of anthropological science, ethnography, sociology, ethics, and jurisprudence, are entering into closer relations with the theory of evolution, and can no longer escape its influence. In view of all this, it is ridiculous for theological and metaphysical journals to talk, as they do, of the failure of evolution and "the death-bed of Darwinism."

Our science of evolution won its greatest triumph when, at the beginning of the twentieth century, its most powerful opponents, the Churches, became reconciled to it, and endeavoured to bring their dogmas into line with it. A number of timid attempts to do so had been made in the preceding ten years by different free-thinking theologians and philosophers, but without much success. The distinction of accomplishing this in a comprehensive and well-informed manner was reserved for a Jesuit, Father Erich Wasmann of Luxemburg. This able and learned entomologist had already earned some recognition in zoology by a series of admirable observations on the life of ants, and the captives that they always keep in their homes, certain very small insects which have themselves been curiously modified by adaptation to their peculiar environment. He showed that these striking modifications can only be rationally explained by descent from other free-living species of insects. The various papers in which Wasmann gave a thoroughly Darwinian explanation of the biological phenomena first appeared (1901-1903) in the Catholic periodical, Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, and are now collected in a special work entitled, Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution.

This remarkable book of Wasmann's is a masterpiece of Jesuitical sophistry. It really consists of three entirely different sections. The first third gives, in the introduction, what is, for Catholics, a clear and instructive account of modern biology, especially the cell-theory, and the theory of evolution (chapters i.-viii.). The second third, the ninth chapter, is the most valuable part of the work. It has the title: "The Theory of Fixity or the theory of Evolution?" Here the learned entomologist gives an interesting account of the results of his prolonged studies of the morphology and the oecology of the ants and their captives, the myrmecophilÆ. He shows impartially and convincingly that these complicated and remarkable phenomena can only be explained by evolution, and that the older doctrine of the fixity and independent creation of the various species is quite untenable. With a few changes this ninth chapter could figure as a useful part of a work by Darwin or Weismann or some other evolutionist. The succeeding chapter (the last third) is flagrantly inconsistent with the ninth. It deals most absurdly with the application of the theory of evolution to man. The reader has to ask himself whether Wasmann really believes these confused and ridiculous notions, or whether he merely aims at befogging his readers, and so preparing the way for the acceptance of the conventional creed.

Wasmann's book has been well criticised by a number of competent students, especially by Escherich and FrancÉ. While fully recognising his great services, they insist very strongly on the great mischief wrought by this smuggling of the Jesuitical spirit into biology. Escherich points out at length the glaring inconsistencies and the obvious untruths of this "ecclesiastical evolution." He summarises his criticism in the words: "If the theory of evolution can really be reconciled with the dogmas of the Church only in the way we find here, Wasmann has clearly proved that any such reconciliation is impossible. Because what Wasmann gives here as the theory of evolution is a thing mutilated beyond recognition and incapable of any vitality." He tries, like a good Jesuit, to prove that it does not tend to undermine, but to give a firm foundation to, the story of supernatural creation, and that it was really not Lamarck and Darwin, but St. Augustin and St. Thomas of Aquin, who founded the science of evolution. "God does not interfere directly in the order of Nature when he can act by means of natural causes." Man alone constitutes a remarkable exception; because "the human soul, being a spiritual entity, cannot be derived from matter even by the Divine omnipotence, like the vital forms of the plants and animals" (p. 299).

In an instructive article on "Jesuitical Science" (in the Frankfort Freie Wort, No. 22, 1904), R. H. FrancÉ gives an interesting list of the prominent Jesuits who are now at work in the various branches of science. As he rightly says, the danger consists "in a systematic introduction of the Jesuitical spirit into science, a persistent perversion of all its problems and solutions, and an astute undermining of its foundations; to speak more precisely, the danger is that people are not sufficiently conscious of it, and that they, and even science itself, fall into the cleverly prepared pit of believing that there is such a thing as Jesuitical science, the results of which may be taken seriously."[4]

While fully recognising these dangers, I nevertheless feel that the Jesuit Father Wasmann, and his colleagues, have—unwittingly—done a very great service to the progress of pure science. The Catholic Church, the most powerful and widespread of the Christian sects, sees itself compelled to capitulate to the idea of evolution. It embraces the most important application of the idea, Lamarck and Darwin's theory of descent, which it had vigorously combated until twenty years ago. It does, indeed, mutilate the great tree, cutting off its roots and its highest branch; it rejects spontaneous generation or archigony at the bottom, and the descent of man from animal ancestors above. But these exceptions will not last. Impartial biology will take no notice of them, and the religious creed will at length determine that the more complex species have been evolved from a series of simpler forms according to Darwinian principles. The belief in a supernatural creation is restricted to the production of the earliest and simplest stem-forms, from which the "natural species" have taken their origin; Wasmann gives that name to all species that are demonstrably descended from a common stem-form; in other words, to what other classifiers call "stems" or "phyla." The 4,000 species of ants in his system, which he believes to be genetically related, are comprised by him in one "natural species." On the other hand, man forms one isolated "natural species" for himself, without any connection with the other mammals.

The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann betrays in this ingenious distinction between "systematic and natural species" is also found in his philosophic "Thoughts on Evolution" (chap. viii.), his distinction between philosophic and scientific evolution, or between evolution in one stem and in several stems. His remarks (in chap. vii.) on "the cell and spontaneous generation" are similarly marred by sophistry. The question of spontaneous generation or archigony—that is to say, of the first appearance of organic life on the earth, is one of the most difficult problems in biology, one of those in which the most distinguished students betray a striking weakness of judgment. Dr. Heinrich Schmidt, of Jena, has lately written an able and popular little work on that subject. In his Spontaneous Generation and Professor Reinke (1903), he has shown to what absurd consequences the ecclesiastical ideas lead on this very question. The botanist Reinke, of Kiel, is now regarded amongst religious people as the chief opponent of Darwinism; for many conservatives this is because he is a member of the Prussian Herrenhaus (a very intelligent body, of course!). Although he is a strong evangelical, many of his mystic deductions agree surprisingly with the Catholic speculations of Father Wasmann. This is especially the case with regard to spontaneous generation. They both declare that the first appearance of life must be traced to a miracle, to the work of a personal deity, whom Reinke calls the "cosmic intelligence." I have shown the unscientific character of these notions in my last two works, The Riddle of the Universe, and The Wonders of Life. I have drawn attention especially to the widely distributed monera of the chromacea class—organisms of the simplest type conceivable, whose whole body is merely an unnucleated, green, structureless globule of plasm (Chroococcus); their whole vital activity consists of growth (by forming plasm) and multiplication (by dividing into two). There is little theoretical difficulty in conceiving the origin of these new simple monera from inorganic compounds of albumen, or their later transformation into the simplest nucleated cells. All this, and a good deal more that will not fit in his Jesuitical frame, is shrewdly ignored by Wasmann.

In view of the great influence that Catholicism still has on public life in Germany, through the Centre party, this change of front should be a great gain to education. Virchow demanded as late as 1877 that the dangerous doctrine of evolution should be excluded from the schools. The Ministers of Instruction of the two chief German States gratefully adopted this warning from the leader of the progressive party, forbade the teaching of Darwinian ideas, and made every effort to check the spread of biological knowledge. Now, twenty-five years afterwards, the Jesuits come forward, and demand the opposite. They recognise openly that the hated theory of evolution is established, and try to reconcile it with the creed! What an irony of history! And we find much the same story when we read the struggles for freedom of thought and for the recognition of evolution in the other educated countries of Europe.

In Italy, its cradle and home, educated people generally look upon the papacy with the most profound disdain. I have spent many years in Italy, and have never met an educated Italian of such bigoted and narrow views as we usually find amongst educated German Catholics—represented with success in the Reichstag by the Centre party. It is proof enough of the reactionary character of German Catholics that the Pope himself describes them as his most vigorous soldiers, and points them out as models to the faithful of other nations. As the whole history of the Roman Church shows, the charlatan of the Vatican is the deadly enemy of free science and free teaching. The present German Emperor ought to regard it as his most sacred duty to maintain the tradition of the Reformation, and to promote the formation of the German people in the sense of Frederick the Great. Instead of this we have to look on with heavy hearts while the Emperor, badly advised and misled by those in influence about him, suffers himself to be caught closer and closer in the net of the Catholic clergy, and sacrifices to it the intelligence of the rising generation. In September, 1904, the Catholic journals announced triumphantly that the adoption of Catholicism by the Emperor and his Chancellor was close at hand.[5]

The firmness of the belief in conventional dogmas, which hampers the progress of rational enlightenment in orthodox Protestant circles as well as Catholic, is often admired as an expression of the deep emotion of the German people. But its real source is their confusion of thought and their credulity, the power of conservative tradition, and the reactionary state of political education. While our schools are bent under the yoke of the creeds, those of our neighbours are free. France, the pious daughter of the Church, gives anxious moments to her ambitious mother. She is breaking the chains of the Concordat, and taking up the work of the Reformation. In Germany, the birthplace of the Reformation, the Reichstag and the Government vie with each other in smoothing the paths for the Jesuits, and fostering, instead of suppressing, the intolerant spirit of the sectarian school. Let us hope that the latest episode in the history of evolution, its recognition by Jesuitical science, will bring about the reverse of what they intend—the substitution of rational science for blind faith.