May 1925
TH E K I N G ’S B U S I N E S S
201
Q>Q-*<— -*» -g_,. X Haeckel* and H is Accusers By Professor Beander S. Keyser, D. D., Hamma Divinity School, Springfield, Ohio
Dr. Keyser, with his usual thorough-going scholarship and unanswerable logic,, completely demolishes the sophistries and evasions of Haeckel and Huxley in their attempts to establish the truth of organic evolution. He shows some of the tricks admittedly employed by them and other evolutionists, such as the “schematized pictures of embryos” and “row of anthropoids,” but which are accepted as authoritative by gullible “would-be” scholars.
N infidel firm publishes a translation of Ernst Haeckel’s answer to the scientists and church men who accused him of falsifying his data in order to bolster up the theory of *.evolution. This translation was issued in 1911, although it has just been brought to our notice. We have to say in the first place, that it is a very rough and abusive piece of polemics. It shows no scientific poise and self-possession. True, Haeckel may have been treated quite severely by his opponents, who believed that he had “doctored” the facts in order to make out his case for evolution; but, if he was treated drastically, he certainly paid back his opponents in the same kind of coin in abun dant measure. He had many epithets at his command. He called all his opponents, whether Protestant or Catholic. “Jesuits,” and accused them of many willful perversions, and also of that terrible crime in the eyes of unbelievers, “ignorance.” We will not soil the pages of this magazine by quoting the many bad names he applies to his critics, or that he avers they applied to him. We are not in the least interested in such personalities and recriminations. However, some principles involved in the debate are of importance. A “Schematizing” Scientist Dr. Haeckel admits in this brochure that he did “schema tize thq;pictures of the embryos.” It will be remembered that he tried to prove evolution by means of the(recapitu latory theory— that is, the development of the human fetus. Then he says: “By ‘schematize’ I mean I omitted unessen tial adjuncts and strongly emphasized essential form rela tions. I also filled in deficiencies here and there by com parative syntheses.” Dr. Joseph McCabe, the well-known British evolutionist and infidel, wrote a defense of Haeckel, which is included in this pamphlet. McCabe says (pp. 44, 45) that Haeckel discovered “differences,” but he thought they “were never material.” Note, he did not regard dif ferences as essential; but “the succession of similarities was carefully preserved— as is done in Huxley’s succession of anthropoid and human skeletons for the same purpose.” But Huxley’s doing so does not make it right. On page 19 Haeckel says: “I purposely chose a younger chimpanzee and orang-outang, because their similarity to man is more striking than that of older apes.” Was not that manipulation in the interest of a theory? Again he says on page 21: “I intentionally omitted unessential feat ures from the presentation, in order that the essential feat ures should come out all the more clearly.” It is obvious that, by such a method, a “scientist” could prove almost anything. We are not accusing Dr. Haeckel of “any wrongful intent;’’ he was simply .so obsessed with the evolution theory that he felt justified in accentuating the points in its favor, while he suppressed those that might have been construed as hostile to it. These admissions, we hold, are' fatal to the evolution theory. If the differences were blurred or eliminated and only the similarities were brought forward, that surely was manipulating the data in the interest of a subjective view. Suppose an anti-evolutionist had made embryonic
pictures and had shown only the differences and omitted or suppressed the similarities, he might seemingly have made out his case. Huxley’s row of anthropoids, ending with the skeleton of a man, is marked by the same adept handling; all the ape skeletons are made to stand upright, which is not their natural position, and thus a somewhat close resemblance is made to appear between the apes and the man. Suppose that Huxley had represented' the apes in their natural position, “going on all fours,” how marked would have been the •difference between man and them! We have seen the skeletons of horses, and camels placed in the upright position, standing beside the skeleton of a man, and the similarities, except the heads, were very striking. Thus it is easy to man-handle things in such a way that they look much alike, if at the same time you put the dissimilarities into the background ór masquerade them all together. Antics of Anthropoids Taking- another look at Huxley’s •row of skeletons of anthropoid apes leading up to man, the fact appears that the gibbon, although placed first and farthest away from the man, most closely resembles him. This is true of the head, the whole skeleton, and the position. In fact, the gibbon is represented as standing more erect than is the man;||there is decidedly less of a bend about the loins. The orang and chimpanzee are bent over much more than are the gibbon and the man. And, remarkable as it may seem, the gorilla, which is placed next to the man, is bent over the most, and in general resembles man the least. Oddly enough, too, the coccyx of the man is moré developed than are those of the gibbon and the orang. Does not this last fact prove that this addendum in man is not a useless vestige) but serves some needful purpose or it would dis- appear|B& This Huxleyan arrangement of four, anthropoids and a man presents some interesting facts, although it is evi dently manhandled in such a way as to impress thé novi tiate as an argument for man’s evolution from the simians or the primates. For example, the gorilla, which is placed nearest to the man, has proportionately longer arms— or fore legs— than has the chimpanzee. That does not agree with the theory of evolution, for the nearer the simian approaches man, the shorter his arms should become, because they are not so much needed, since their owner has become less of a tree-climber and more of a ground walker. Again, the head and face of the gibbon,, which is far thest from man, is much more like those of the man than are any of the others, while the. head and face of the gor illa, nearest to man, are least like those of the man. The hind legs of the gorilla are quite bent, and show that his partially upright position is a very strained one, whereas the gibbon stands quite straight, both his legs and his ver tebral column beina^almost perpendicular. It is therefore surprising that Huxley and Haeckel did not place the gibbon nearest to man to bolster their theory, ^ h ile they were' “doctoring up” the case, why were they not a little more acute? (Continued on page 232)
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs