Evrim: Bir İnceleme ve Eleştiri - Evolution: An Investigation and a Critique

E-text prepared by Kurt A. T. Bodling, formerly Director of Library

Services at Concordia College, Bronxville, New York, USA

EVOLUTION.

An Investigation and a Criticism

TH. GRAEBNER,
Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo.

Milwaukee, Wis.Northwestern Publishing House,1921.

Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit InfinitumEns. Linne.

To the Memory of my teacher (New Ulm, 1892) John Schaller Educator,
Theologian, Student of Science these chapters are dedicated by The
Author

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Chapter 1. An Outline of the Theory…11Definition—Historical Review—The Darwinian Hypothesis—Lines ofEvidence—The Descent of Man—The Nebular Hypothesis—The Origin ofLife—The Bearing of Evolution on Christianity.

Chapter 2. Unexplained Origins…29The Origin of the Universe—The Origin of Life—Biological Barriers—Man.

Chapter 3. The Testimony of the Rocks…47

Chapter 4. The Fixity of Species…62

Chapter 5. Rudimentary Organs…70

Chapter 6. Instinct…74

Chapter 7. Heredity…80

Chapter 8. A Scientific Creed Outworn…87

Chapter 9. Man…94

Chapter 10. The Verdict of History…113

Chapter 11. Evidences of Design…124

Chapter 12. The Fatal Bias…141

PREFATORY.

I first read Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" in the library of mysainted uncle, John Schaller, at New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1892. I did notcomprehend all of it then, a cause, to me, of considerable chagrin, forwhich I later found some consolation in the opinion of Dr. FrederickLynch, who pronounces Darwin's epochal work "one of the two mostdifficult books in the English language." But like many others, Iunderstood enough of Darwin's book to catch glimpses of the grandeur ofthe conception which underlies its argumentation. It was then that mybeloved uncle, out of that wide and accurate reading which sofrequently astonished his friends, and with that penetrating dialecticof his, opened my eyes to certain fallacies in Darwin's argument,especially to the fatal weakness of the chapter on Instinct. Thereading of St. George Mivart's book "The Genesis of Species" laterconvinced me of the accuracy of my uncle's judgment. But the fascinationof the subject persisted, and for a time Herbert Spencer's "SyntheticPhilosophy," by the comprehensiveness of its induction and its vastarray of data, exercised its thrall. Alfred Russel Wallace's"Darwinism," Huxley's "Lectures on Evolution," Tyndall's "The Beginningof Things," Grant Allen's "The Evolutionist at Large," Eimer's"Orthogenesis," Clodd's "Story of Creation," occupied me in turn, untilthe apodictic presentation of John Fiske's Essays on Darwinism, no lessthan the open and haggard opposition to Christianity which prevails inHuxley's "Science and Hebrew Tradition" and in Spencer's chapters on"The Unknowable" (so the Synthetic Philosophy denominates God), causeda revulsion of sentiment,—the anti-religious bias of evolutionstanding forth the clearer to my mind, the longer I occupied myself withthe subject.

I determined to investigate for myself the data on which thespeculations whose mazes I had trod these years were built up. Theleisure hours of three years were devoted to the study of first-

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