Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/16

 1. Testimony for Evolution.

There are teachers of science who do not hesitate to assure us that the doctrine of evolution is now no longer a theory but an assured fact. A few representative quotations from that class will suffice.

Dr. P. C. Mitchell says, in a late edition of the "Encyclopedia Britannica":


 * The vast bulk of botanical and biological work on living and extinct forms published during the last quarter of the nineteenth century increased almost beyond all expectation the evidence for the fact of evolution.

Prof. S. C. Schmucker, of the West Chester, Pennsylvania, State Normal School, in his book, "The Meaning of Evolution," says:


 * Among students of animals and plants there is no longer any question as to the truth of evolution. That the animals of the present are the altered animals of the past, that the plants of today are the modified plants of yesterday, that civilized man of today is the savage of yesterday and the tree dweller of the day before, is no longer debatable to the mass of biologists.

Professor Fish, then of Denison University, Granville, Ohio, not long ago dictated to his class, of which the writer's daughter was a member, the following statement:


 * Organic evolution is the key to all biological thinking of today. It is not a theory but a fact, because the main facts are true. Man is the off-spring of the lower animals, and the ancestry can be traced back to the simplest forms of animals known. All medical research takes that fact into account.