A critical reader of the works of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel, Romanes, Weismann, Mivart, Cope and other writers, on organic evolution, will find that there is much diversity in the views of these writers. Darwin believes that the first one, or the first few, animals and plants were directly and specially made by the Creator; Haeckel says the primordial forms arose “by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter.” Referring to the origin of life, Romanes says that “science is not in a position to furnish so much as suggestion upon the subject.” Neither Huxley, Weismann, Mivart nor Cape has anything to say on the origin of life. No two of these writers agree as to the work of the “factors” of evolution. According to Darwin, Romanes and Weismann, natural selection did substantially the entire work of evolving all the species of animal and plant. But Cope, and other evolutionists of the Lamarckian school, hold that use, disuse, pressure, friction and motion did it.

Weismann argues that the inheritance of “acquired characters” is impossible; while Spencer, Romanes and other evolutionists say that Weismann’s views are highly absurd and would entirely destroy the theory of evolution; and I think they are correct in this view. There are many evolutionists for and against Weismann’s theory of heredity. Writers on evolution differ as widely on other important questions, as on these.

Many of the theories of the evolutionists are quite absurd. Among these may be mentioned the theory of “protective mimicry” and “sexual selection.” So their belief that the blind “factors,” working by chance and accident, have differentiated one part of a minute individual into a set of male sexual organs, and another part of the same individual into a set of female sexual organs, as in hermaphroditic animals and plants, appears to be quite preposterous. So it is impossible to believe these “factors” have differentiated one-half of the individuals of each species of mammal into males and the other half into females, for example into men and women. If time and space permitted me, I could easily point out divers other absurdities in the views of the evolutionists.

To be consistent, every evolutionist must maintain that characters, acquired by the parent, are transmitted by heredity to their offspring; for the whole theory of evolution is based on the hypothesis of accumulated “adaptations and variations.” Thus, suppose a pair of snakes have ten vertebrÆ (joints) in their spinal columns; that each of them acquires one, making eleven; that their offspring start with eleven and acquire one, and so on until the ninetieth generation, which would have a hundred vertebrÆ. Such a thing might happen, according to the evolutionist; but I do not believe any such thing ever did happen.

But no evolutionist has ever shown how or why the offspring happen to resemble one or both of their parents. In brief, the mechanism of heredity is wholly unknown. The evolutionist tells us that “heredity and adaptation” have evolved all the species of animal and plant. Having done this, he appears to think that he has explained all the phenomena of reproduction, heredity and life. But his solution of the vital equation contains an unknown quantity, namely: “heredity;” and it is, therefore, no solution at all.

The evolutionist and materialist maintain that the blind unthinking atoms and cells, of which the embryo body is made, do, spontaneously and automatically, without the aid or guidance of any extraneous, psychic or creative force, group themselves into the chemical combinations and mechanical arrangements, which are necessary to build up the embryo body with all its organs and parts—its brain, eyes, ears, heart, lungs, etc. This is the most preposterous of all their propositions.

I have worked out this proposition:

“Intellect, memory, will-power, force and motion are necessary to group two or more atoms into a prescribed chemical combination; or into a specified mechanical arrangement.”

Thus, if the reader were required to group ten silver dollars into a triangle with three dollars in each side and one in the center, he must have intellect to understand the nature and properties of a triangle; and to know how to construct it; and to know when it is completed; must have memory to bear these things in mind while doing the work; must have will-power to begin and continue the work until it is completed; must generate such force and produce such motions as are necessary to assemble and group the coins into the prescribed figure.

Can the reader discover any flaw in this proposition?

There is no trace of the coming embryo in the germ-cell (fertilized ovum); nor of any organ or part of it. It follows that each embryo and every organ and part of it must be made, anew, of fresh materials; that the atoms and cells of which it is composed must be selected, assembled and grouped into the chemical combinations and mechanical arrangements which are necessary to construct the embryo body and each organ and part of it; each organ and part of it being a new combination of its component atoms and cells.

Intellect, memory, will-power, force and motion—supernatural, psychic and creative force—are necessary to make each embryo body and every organ and part of it. Let us suppose that a hundred million silver dollars were coined last year, at the mint in Philadelphia. It is clear that each of these coins was made, anew; that it was a new combination of the atoms of silver and copper contained in it; that it required the same work to make each of them, that it did to make every other—the same to make the last that it did to make the first. The same is true of each man and woman.

The purpose of this little work is to present some of the facts, and make some of the arguments, which tend to prove that each human being is a new, direct and special creation by Almighty God!

Noble Smithson.

Knoxville, Tennessee.
Nov. 1, 1911.