Fossil apes have been found and these remains give no indication of the truth of the evolutionary theory. Professor Wassman says:- "We have the pedigree of the present apes, a pedigree very rich in: species and coming down from the hypothetical ancestral form of the oldest Tertiary period to the present day. Zittel's Griindzuge der Palaontologie gives a list of no fewer than thirty genera of fossil Pro-Simiae, and eighteen genera of fossil apes, the remains of which are buried in the various strata from the Lower Eocene to the close of the Alluvial Epoch, but not one connecting link has been found between their hypothetical ancestral forms and mart at the present time. The whole hypothetical pedigree of man is not supported by a single fossil genus or a single fossil species."
A hypothesis ceases to exist when a fact exploding it comes along. So far we have had a bountiful harvest of hypotheses; of facts which can prove the evolutionary theory we have had none.
Of hypotheses, guesses, suppositions, we have had plenty. They at best build up a frail house of cards, which at the breath of one single opposing fact collapses.
Professor Joseph McCabe says that one of Haeckel's distinctive services in regard to man's evolution has been the construction of a complete ancestral tree, though even he admits some of the ideas in it are " PURELY CONJECTURAL and not final." If he had stated that the whole idea of it was conjectural he would have been nearer the mark.
M. de Quatrefages, the French scientist, referring to it, says:- " The first thing to remark is that NOT ONE of the creatures exhibited in this pedigree has ever been seen, either living or fossil; their existence is based ENTIRELY on theory, and often from one stage to another which is much too broad a gulf. Further, Haeckel invents these types himself, as well as the line of descent to which he assigns them."
Dr. Arnold Brass accused Haeckel of taking the drawings of other biologists and altering them, taking away fifteen or sixteen vertebra from one monkey-embryo and altering the name, and adding tail-vertebra to another. He also added to a human embryo eleven vertebra not in the original drawing.
Haeckel replied to this most serious charge:—" To put an end to this unsavory dispute, I begin at once with the contrite confession that a small number (6 to 8 per cent.) of my embryo diagrams are really forgeries in Dr. Brass's sense: those complete or insufficient as to compel us... to fill in and reconstruct the missing links by hypothesis and comparative synthesis... I should feel utterly condemned and annihilated by the admission, were it not that hundreds of the best observers and most reputable biologists lie under the same charge. The great majority of all morphological, anatomical, histological and embryological diagrams... are not true to nature, but are more or less doctored, schematized and reconstructed " (Muncher Allgemeine Zeitung, January, 1909).
We can understand if a human skeleton were found with one hand, it would not be doctoring to draw a skeleton with two hands, but to do what Haeckel is accused of doing is fraudulent, and the man who does fraudulent things is a fraud. A little Christian character, which he affected to despise, would have saved him from such a state of things Infidelity is at best negative and destructive, and is no safeguard against fraud and immorality.
Not only is Haeckel obliged to make a damaging admission, but he drags in " hundreds of the best observers and most reputable biologists " as being guilty with himself. What are we to make of such an admission? Does it not show that such are out to twist facts, to bolster up false theories which exist only in their imagination?