Page:Creation by Evolution (1928).djvu/258

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

CREATION BY EVOLUTION

"phylogeny," of racial development. All reputable living biologists accept evolution either as proved or as so thoroughly substantiated as to be practically proved, but they differ as to the precise natural factors or conditions that have brought it about in any particular group of organisms. This point cannot be too strongly emphasized, because the discussions of biologists over the precise nature of the process of evolution are continually being misrepresented by ignorant or dishonest anti-evolutionists as confessions of disbelief in the occurrence of the process itself. There is surely nothing unusual about the discussions of evolutionary causes by biologists. Everybody now believes in what we call gravitation, but physicists, past and present, are by no means unanimous in their views of the precise nature or causes of gravitation. Those who are emotionally upset by the conception of a collateral generic relationship between men and the anthropoid apes may be reminded that although the difference in psychological and social behavior between the animals of these two groups is undoubtedly considerable, such behavior has exhibited great change even during historical time, and that the structural and functional differences between men and the anthropoids are trivial as compared with those which separate a frog's egg from an adult frog; yet this enormous gap is bridged by a continuous process that occurs under our very eyes. Endless confusion in the popular mind might be avoided if we could dissuade all journalists, politicians, teachers, and clerics from talking or writing on evolution till they had made an intensive first-hand study of the embryology of some animal or plant or a thorough investigation of some group of wild or domesticated animals or plants.

Now it is easy to prove genetic continuity within existing species and between the breeds or races of domesticated forms, but it is very difficult to prove genetic relationships

[ 212 ]