Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/45

Rh rather Mr. Curtis would discuss the point than we; for we really can not profess to understand either the economy that could have accompanied the reduction of structures, well developed in other types to the rudimentary condition in which they are found in man, or the wisdom of producing, by a fresh exertion of power, that which was functionally useless.

Our author combats in turn nearly every position taken by Mr. Spencer in his exposition of biological evolution. To Mr. Spencer's statement that not only did no one ever see a special creation take place, but "no one ever found indirect proof of any kind that a special creation had taken place," he affirms that indirect evidence has been accumulated to an enormous extent to show that the earth is full of "special creations." If no one, he proceeds to say, ever saw a special creation take place, neither has any one ever seen an instance in which an animal of one species has been evolved out of another of a different species. Considering that the evolution of a species is conceived and uniformly represented as a process requiring multiplied generations for its accomplishment, whereas special creation, if it ever occurred before witnesses, would, we must suppose, be as observable a thing as the shooting of a meteor across the sky, the cases are not quite parallel. Of course, it is open to the creationist to say that no act of creation has taken place since man was called into being; but if so, it must be admitted that the evolutionist, who does not require to say that the processes in which he believes came to a stop very long ago, but who affirms, on the contrary, that the laws of evolution are just as active now as they ever were, has slightly the advantage. Moreover, the evolutionist, if he can not crowd centuries into an hour, and show the transformation of species and genera accomplishing itself before our eyes, can point to changes now in progress which, if continued through the ages, could not fail to produce the widest divergences in animal and vegetable forms. The creationist has absolutely nothing to show us that hints at or points to creation as the term is commonly understood—the flashing of something out of nothing. Mr. Curtis would fain persuade us that Shakespeare's production of "Hamlet" is an act of creation analogous, comparing small things with great, to the creation of the world. The idea is a little preposterous. Did "Hamlet" come out of nothing in any sense whatever? Was it not a special combination of ideas, experiences, imaginations, conceptions, that were part of the personality of the dramatist? And these experiences, imaginations, etc., were they not the result of the author's contact with the outer world? Are not all the words used to express even our most abstract mental operations, borrowed from the phenomena of daily life? The fact that "Hamlet" was not a creation in the theological sense is proved by the simple consideration that it was the work of the individual William Skakespeare, and came forth from his brain as it could not have come forth from any other brain. Why should a