December 1927
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“Darwin Is Right”—But Is He? By F rank E . A llen (Author of “Evolution in the Balances " )
HE address of Sir Arthur Keith, president of the British Association for the Advancement. of Science, delivered at Leeds, August 31st, entitl ed “Darwin’s Theory as it Stands Today,” has received prominent notice in thè public press of America. The fact that he succeeds the Prince of Wales as president of this Association possibly lends wider publicity to his utterances. In his retiring address the Prince of Wales accords Sir Arthur an unusually high place in Britain “in the science of man’s origin and early biological history.” He says, “I have reason to be lieve that when any one in this country digs up a bone his first instinct (subject to the intervention of the police) is to send it to Sir Arthur Keith.” When the writer was preparing his book, “Evolution in the Balances,” he studied and quoted from Professor Keith’s book entitlèd “The Antiquity pf Man.” It was being used as one of the text-books in the Medical De partment of Manitoba University. His books, articles and addresses have attracted international attention. He is often quoted in the public press in all civilized countries. His radical stand as an advocate of Evolution is well known. Sir Arthur is a rationalist. Of him a well-informed writer says : “Sir Arthur Keith quoted as a fundamental oracle on the evolution of man, is a member of the Ration alist Association in London which has labored to my knowledge for over forty years for the destruction of Christianity. In the annual of that association the quality of its evolution is measured by its main articles. The first is to prove that Jesus is a myth.” Three of the foremost objections to Sir Arthur’s ad dress may be summed up as follows : First : He declares that the Bible record of creation has been forever disproved. Second : He denies that God had anything to do with the appearance and progress of man. Third : He implies that there has been no fall of man ; that the progress of man from the anthropoid ape has, for a million years, been ever upward ; that the same biological forces which brought him to his present state have been ever at work; that these and these only have to do with the progress of man and his present condition. Sir Arthur declares that sixty-nine years ago scarcely any onè believed in the evolution of man from the lower animals, but now almost all those whom he addressed ac cepted such a view. There was apparently no one in the as sociation who voiced a dissent from Professor Keith’s con clusions. The Prince of Wales upon retiring from the presidency said that this subject had more than once been one of warm controversy at their meetings, but now, he was thankful to say, there would be no controversy. Note Sir Arthur Keith’s own words : “As I address these words to you I cannot help marveling over the difference between our outlook today and that of the audience which Sir Rich ard Owen had to face in this city sixty-nine years ago. The vast assemblage which confronted him was convinced, almost without a dissentient, that man had appeared on earth by a special act of creation; whereas the audience
which I have now the honor of addressing, and that larger congregation which the wonders of wireless bring within the reach of my voice, if not convinced Darwiniste are yet prepared to believe, when full proofs are forthcoming, that man began his career as a humble primate animal, and has reached his present estate by the action and reac tion of biological forces which have been and are ever at work within his body and brain.” Is not such a change in the body of leading scientists enough to cause any one to marvel ? To every Christian, is it not tragical ? What shall we say of a body of learned men in the British Isles, the home of Presbyterianism and Puritanism and- Methodism, who can openly and deliber ately and without opposition set aside the record of the Word of God? We often hear it said that one cannot be a Christian in church and corrupt in politics. But is it not time to ask : “Can one be a Christian in the classroom of the Sabbath School and an agnostic in the classroom of the University? C onditional P remises B ring P ositive C onclusion Sir Arthur Keith does not differ from other Evolution ists in this, that he builds his argument on conditional premises, and yet arrives at a. positive conclusion. H e even asserts that he believes Darwin’s position is impregnable, that it never can be shaken. He admits that Darwin had merely circumstantial evidence. He admits doubt in many phases of the argument; that “the process has been in finitely more complex than was suspected in Darwin’s time” ; that “to unravel man’s pedigree, we have to thread our way, not along the links of a chain, but through the meshes of a complicated network” ; that “among the welter of extinct fossil forms which strew the ancient world we have to trace the zigzag line of man’s descent” ; that there are “difficulties and dangers which beset the task of unraveling man’s ancestry. There are other difficulties; there still remain great blanks in the geological record of man’s evolution” ; that concerning the brain “our inquiries are but begun. There is so much that we do not yet un derstand. Will the day ever come when we can explain why the brain of man bas made such great progress while that of his cousin the gorilla has fallen so far behind?” ; that concerning the action of hormones, “we know enough to realize that it will take many generations of in vestigators to work over the great and new field which is thus opening up” ; that “we know only a little concerning the system of government which prevails in the developing embryo.” Yet with all these suppositions and 'doubts in the course of his argument he arrives at a positive and dogmatic conclusion that man has been raised from a place among the anthropoid apes to that which he now occupies. Surely there is need of a course in elementary logic among men who reason in such a manner! D oes T h e B ible L ack C onfirmation ? Let us look at some of the arguments of Prof. Keith more definitely, First, let us note his denial of the trust worthiness of the Biblical record of creation. He said: “In this city was fired the first verbal shot of that long and bitter strife which ended in the overthrow of those who
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