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Some of my correspondents wished peremptorily to deny me the right of passing judgment upon Darwin’s doctrine, because I am not a naturalist by profession. Here we see an example of the confusion of ideas that results from confusion of language. Darwinism is a high-sounding, but hollow and unreal word, like most of the names that end in ism.
But the most immediately dangerous result of political 'Darwinism' was not its effect in justifying the extermination of African aborigines by European colonists, but the fact that the conception of the 'struggle for life' could be used as a proof that that conflict among the European nations for the control of the trade-routes of the world which has been threatening for the last quarter of a century is for each of the nations concerned both a scientific necessity and a moral duty.
The actual circumstances, therefore, are the very reverse of those pictured by Wagner. Darwinism has been rejected not on account of a lack of research but on account of an abundance of research, which provided its absolute insufficiency. Besides these "general points of view," as he calls them, Wagner finds two other "considerations of no less importance" for explaining the decay of Darwinism.
Tyndall says: “They were once latent in a fiery cloud.” Farewell to common sense or Darwinism—which shall it be?
The only rational course for those who had no other object than the attainment of truth, was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis, and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of organic life, or it would break down under the strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense; and, for once, common sense carried the day.
The conclusions of Steinmann, that are most important for us, may be summarized as follows: 1. The family and transition forms demanded from palaeontology by Darwinism for its family-trees, constructed not empirically but a priori, are nowhere to be found among the abundant materials which palaeontological investigation has already produced.
Round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there all the same. In reading some of our opponents, I am not a little reminded of those catholic writers who refute darwinism by telling us that higher species cannot come from lower because minus nequit gignere plus, or that the notion of transformation is absurd, for it implies that species tend to their own destruction, and that would violate the principle that every reality tends to persevere in its own shape.
Every instinct and conviction of the human mind rises in indignant repudiation of the theory of man's descent. Wallace says, at the conclusion of his defense of Darwinism: "The faculties of man could not possibly have been developed by means of the same laws which have determined the progressive development of the world in general, and also of man's physical organism" the human body.
A recognition of the impressive secret of the organism led Gustav Wolff to become a very pronounced critic of Darwinism, especially in the form of Weismannism.
Darwinism discredits the things that are supernatural and encourages the worship of the intellect an idolatry as deadly to spiritual progress as the worship of images made by human hands. The injury that it does would be even greater than it is but for the moral momentum acquired by the student before he comes under the blighting influence of the doctrine.
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