The Fundamentals - 1910: Vol.7

14 The Fundamentals limbs. To learn the character of these changes, one has but to “contrast the markedly bent hind limbs of a cat with its al- most straight fore limbs, or contrast the silence of the upward spring on to the table with the thud which the fore paws make as it jumps off the table.” So numerous are the simultaneous changes necessary to secure any advantage here, that the prob- abilities against their arising fortuitously run up into billions, if not into infinity; so that they are outside of any rational recognition. THE ORIGIN OF MAN The failure of evolution to account for man is conspicuous. Early in the Darwinian discussion, Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s most distinguished co-worker, instanced various physical peculiarities in man which could not have originated through natural selection alone, but which necessitated the interference of a superior directing power. Among these are (a) the absence in man of any natural protective covering. The nakedness of man which exposes him to the inclemency of the weather could never in itself have been an advantage which natural selection could .take hold of. I t could have been of use only when his intelligence was so developed that he could construct tools for skinning animals and for weaving and sewing garments. And that practically involves all essential human attributes. (b) The size of the human brain. Man’s brain is out of all proportion to the mental needs of the highest of the animal creation below him. Without man’s intelligence such a brain would be an incumbrance rather than an advantage. The weight of the largest brain of a gorilla is considerably less than half that of the average man, and only one third that of the best developed of the human race. (c) This increase in the size of the brain is connected also with a number of other special adaptations of the bodily frame to the wants o f the human mind. For example, the thumb of

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