This genealogical tree is a great favorite with certain evolutionists. Why so many plants and animals suddenly cease to evolve, and why certain plants and animals should go on evolving till man was produced, and why man should cease to evolve, and not go on to be an angel, or at least a super-man, we are left to guess. The very numerous, nay, innumerable missing links are no setback to the airy assumptions of these men of science.
We append a few quotations of well-known scientists as to Haeckel's views. The capitals in the following quotations are ours.
Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace writes:- " Biologists generally are agreed that Haeckel's DARING SPECULATIONS AND RECKLESS PROGRESS in advance of observed fact have been, in a way, always reprehensible and dangerous to the fair fame of biological science " Darwinism Today, P. 131.
This is pretty strong language. Haeckel was an ardent infidel, and his writings, attacking Christianity, were translated into English, and circulated in a cheap form among the working classes very largely. At any rate the Bible he attacked would have kept him honest, if he had been guided by it.
M. de Quatrefages is still more explicit and damaging in his remarks:- " Not one of the creatures in this pedigree has ever been seen. No skeleton or fossil of a single one of these creatures has ever been discovered. Their existence is BASED WHOLLY ON THEORY. To fill his gaps, Haeckel INVENTS the type as well as the line of descent to which he assigns them. Whenever a branch or a twig is lacking on this genealogical tree, whenever the transit from one type to another would appear too abrupt, he INVENTS SPECIES AND GROUPS BODILY to which he unhesitatingly assigns a place. Is it not very singular that evidence must be supposed always to have perished, which the evolution theory imperatively requires, while so much evidence remains to contradict it?"
Let the reader note the dishonesty of all this, to invent, to fill up species and groups for which there is NO evidence, and to ignore MUCH evidence which clearly points against the evolutionary theory. Judge how far the working man can follow Haeckel when he takes upon himself to give advice in religious matters.
Professors Dewar and Finn write:- " It is nothing short of a misfortune that Haeckel's History of Creation, which seems to be so widely read in England, should be built on a FALLACIOUS FOUNDATION." The Making of Species, p. 24.
Professor Sir J. W. Dawson writes:- " I saw not long ago, a series of genealogies in geological time reduced to tabular form by that ingenious, but imaginative physiologist, Haeckel. In one of these appeared the imaginary derivation of the higher plants from Algae or sea-weeds. NOTHING COULD MORE CURIOUSLY CONTRADICT ACTUAL FACTS " The Story of the Earth and Man.
Lastly Dr. Russell Wallace writes:- " With Professor Haeckel's dislike of the dogmas of theologians ... many of us have the greatest sympathy, but we have none with HIS UNFOUNDED DOGMATISM OF COMBINED NEGATION AND OMNISCIENCE and more especially with THIS ASSUMPTION OF SUPERIOR KNOWLEDGE, which seems to be put forward to conceal his real ignorance of the nature of life itself " The World of Life, p. 7.