CORRESPONDENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19439, 27 October 1925, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE

EVOLUTION • (To the Editor). Sir, —One feels sorry that any person affecting the position of a teacher should be so ignorant of the very elements of a subject as appears to be the case with Mr R. A. Anderson in his attempt to deal with the subject of evolution, which he sets out to dispose. Surely your correspondent does not dispute that continual change, orderly change, in nature, in the inorganic as well as the organic world, in the individual and in the social life pf the world, in fact, throughout the universe —that this undoubted change, this development, this continual unfolding is termed evolution. That there are various lines of development in the organic world about which scientific men differ, is an undoubted fact; so there is in art, literature, and especially in theology; but that does not affect the broad stream of development which, for the want of a better term, we call evolution. Mr Anderson puts before us three problems which he contends “face the evolutionist and demand logical solution/’ These are: (1) The origin of the earth; (2) the origin of life; (3) the origin of speci.es. If your correspondent would gather what science has to say about the first of these subjects, he would read the lecture delivered by Dr. J. H. Jeans, president of the Royal Astronomical Society, last December (1924). In'this lecture, which represents the matured opinion of one of the greatest living astronomers and mathematicians, he would find the following words: “With the longer time-scale and the recognition that our system of stars must have beeifc more closely packed in the past than now, we can think of planetary system as being if not quite the normal accompaniment of a sun, at least fairly freely distributed in space. ” In this way is the uniqueness of The earth in the universe disposed of, as it should be, and our views of other suns, in space, having planets circling around them, and having beings, possibly like ourselves living upon their surfaces, is quite a reasonable outlook for the rational mind of to-day, and the ancient and ignorant writer of Genesis is seen in his proper place, viz., as one in the light of primitive knowledge endeavouring to explain things as he found them.

Problem second—the origin of life. Evolution is not proven or disproved by the origin of life. The fact that a continual modification of Jife has gone on upon this planet, throughout the ages, is as well proven as anything possibly can be. It is easily seen that your correspondent who pins his faith to the story in Genesis, will not accept this, but then only last August a high church dignitary, the Bishop of Birmingham, was reported as saying, “Man was not specially created by God/’ "So if science cannot demonstrate the origin of life, what more can others do but produce ancient imaginings by primitive minds in the dim light of early intelligence. About this subject, from the scientific side, it may be said that there is every probability that life originated under conditions which are impossible to-day, either in nature or the laboratory, conditions in which temperature, moisture, etc., favoured the production of compounds leading up to protoplasm, as we know it to-day. The evidence that life, generally, begins in a single cell, and goes on to evolve into a multicellular plant, or animal, is everywhere demonstrable. Another fact is that all recent research goes to prove that the distinction between animate and inanimate matter is not so great as was supposed to be the case some years back. It may bo taken again as adequately demonstrated that just as life cannot be conceived as apart from matter, so matter cannot be conceived as being in a state formerly referred to as “dead/* Nature must be regarded as a vast laboratory iA which experiments are continuously being carried out. The initial steps in tUt, origin of life might have taken many millions of years. Nature may have made many combinations before the nicely proportioned quantities of anabolic and katabolic proteins evolved into what wo now know as protoplasm, the basis of organic life. Perhaps this effort of mine will not move Mr Anderson, but to me tho wealth of knowledge about life and its earliest processes is infinitely more interesting and satisfying than a story borrowed from a Babylonian myth and inflicted upon humanity by a Hebrew scribe as the revealed word of a supreme God. Of his third problem, Sir, the evidences are so numerous that one hardly knows what may be produced with greatest effect and in the shortest possible space. That living things have not always been what they are to-day may be proved by a visit to any wellequipped museum. The Bible, Mr Anderson will tell us, is the correct guide. This Book says that man was made in the image and likeness of God. One might ask him where is the true likeness? Is it in a noble countenance of an intellectual man and woman of to-day? Is it in the repulsive face of one of the savages of Africa or Australia? Or we look upon, the shaggy apelike features of primitive man, with his protruding jaw, retreating forehead, great arched bony masses within which the eye of an animal takes the place of intelligent and cultured man? Let him look upon a beautiful horse of to-day and let him go to the Yale Museum, where he may see the primal ancestor and all the “links’’ from tho small Eocene ancestral mammal with five toes on each foot and all the other differences which divided that animal from his progeny ; o-day. It may be said that every liv- ' ing thing to-day, from man downwards, in the scale of life carries within its organism vestiges of organs no longer useful to them. These are the true hisitorical documents that demonstrate his : evolutionary processes. In conclusion I will quote one whom Mr Anderson cites, but in this case as the wise words of one of our very front rank scientists speaking on the doetrine of “evolution,’’ which Mr Ander-

son seeks to disprove. He says: “The demonstration of evolution as a universal law of living nature is tho greatest intellectual achievement of the nineteenth century.” And another, Professor John Fiske: “Minor fluctuations in scientific theory occur in all departments of inquiry but no one doubts the essential soundness of the Darwinian theory, and as for the doctrine of special creation which it superseded, we shall probably go back to it when we go back to the stone arrow heads and the primitive Aryan ox-cart, and not before.” As Dr. Elliott Smith said recently, evolution is as well proven in these days and as firmly established as is the fact of the revolution of the earth around the sun. I suggest to Mr Anderson that he studies a few of the works of tho great biologists and anatomists, and others of the day, with an unbiased mind, and we shall have no more such astounding contentions as he has made in his recent article, —I am, etc., RATIONALIST. Wanganui, October 24, 1825.