Where Do We Come From? Is Darwin Correct? by Herbert Morse

Author:Herbert Morse [Morse, Herbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781351021401
Google: gXuCDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-01-15T02:59:34+00:00

But it is not a question whether the difficulty in believing in a single common ancestor is insuperable or not, but whether there is a sufficient amount of evidence to make it credible. Unfortunately this evidence is again unsatisfactory and by no means exhaustive.

CHAPTER X

NATURA NON FACIT SALTUM

IT is a favourite maxim with Darwin, and one which he is frequently quoting, that nature does nothing by leaps and bounds, or in a hurry. That her progress, is orderly, silent and methodical, that nature abhors violence, and sudden convulsions, as much as she abhors a vacuum. Of course there is a sense and a very deep one in which the saying is strictly true. Every act and operation, however sudden and violent it may appear, has been led up to and foreordained from all eternity. If I suddenly jump off my chair the action though relatively sudden has been ordained from the first. Or again, what can be more sudden and violent than a clap of thunder, but nature has been working up from the beginning to every single atmospheric explosion. Of course in that sense nothing is sudden. But regarded relatively to the effect on the object affected, there have been many terrible and violent convulsions in nature, which must have affected the whole geographical formation of the earth, and every species that inhabited it. And when we have to deal with 60,000,000 years, what catastrophes may not have happened in the interval, any one of which might be sufficient in itself to shatter to pieces, and scatter to the winds Darwin’s theory of orderly evolution and progressive but silent development. Darwin entirely ignores throughout the “Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man” the possibilities of disturbance, destruction and recreation by the great agency of fire. The Ice-age he cannot ignore, though he dislikes it, is evidently shy of it and would fain be rid of it if he could; but as he cannot be rid of it, he wisely puts a bit in its mouth, and utilises it to his own advantage. The reason is obvious, as it must have destroyed or largely minimised all life which was subject to its operations, and given an entirely new direction and setting, to the many organic species that it affected. Indeed, the action of fire, and the action of ice alone, are quite capable of twisting the theory of Natural Selection out of all recognition. They either of them might destroy in an hour the slowly working operation of centuries. Supposing the temperature of the torrid regions of the earth, was suddenly transferred to the temperate, the effect on species in a few years time would do more to alter their characteristics, and modify their variations, than whole epochs of the almost imperceptible method of natural selection. The idea is not inconceivable or improbable, indeed on Darwin’s own showing, it has happened and may happen over and over again.

That very sudden operations do take place in nature, sudden I mean

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