f beginnings in the history of organic being; that is,
Mr. Haeckel claims a vertebrate series with a vertebrate lying at the
base of the series, and an articulate series with an articulate lying at
its base. So there must be A SPECIAL CREATION AT LAST. Hear him: "There
appears, indeed, to be a limit given to the adaptability of every
organism by the type of its tribe or phylum. Thus, for example, no
vertebrate animal can acquire the ventral nerve chord of articulate
animals instead of the characteristic spinal marrow of the vertebrate
animals."--_History of Creation, vol. 1, p. 250._ So the vertebrate must
forever remain a vertebrate, and the articulate forever an articulate.
Were they both evolved from the same unit? We are anxious to know, how
from a pulpy mass of flesh, from a moneron, a creature of one substance,
_vertebrates_ were evolved. We would like to know, also, how a creature
of more than one substance could be evolved from a creature of one
substance without more being gotten out of the thing than there was in
it. Here spontaneous generation passes into a wreck. Do you see? The
pulpy mass of flesh, or moneron, from which so much has been "evolved"
was the result of "the sun's rays falling upon the sea slime," and was
and is a creature of one substance, homogeneous. "Natural selection"
could not operate in the vertebrate type before it existed. It was
"limited to the type or phylum." That is to say, natural selection could
evolve new species without limitation from each type, but could never
evolve a vertebrate from an articulate, nor an articulate from a
vertebrate. Then, how are the two series from the same unit; or, if they
are connected with two different units, how are those units the effect
of the same unintelligent cause? How are we going to cross this chasm
lying between the sun's rays and the sea slime upon the one hand, and
the articulate and the vertebrate upon the other? Darwin says, "Judging
from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will
transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity." Well, how is it
with the past? We are told that millions of years are the demand for the
changes already brought about. Millions of years would certainly be
enough to constitute a "distant futurity." How is it now? Is there not
one species having its likeness represented by a species in the distant
past? Yes; the genus lingula, the species appearing in all the ages, was
"connected by an u