In his Evolution of Man he gives us his "hypothetical sketch of man's ancestry" in thirty stages.
He gives us:
5 Protist Ancestors.
6 Invertebrate Metazoa Ancestors.
4 Monorhina Ancestors (oldest vertebrates without jaws or pairs of limbs).
15 Later Ancestors with fossil evidence.
That he is not on the safe ground of fact, but building on hypothesis is clear. Capitals in following quotations from Chapter 19 of Evolution of Man are ours.
"The certainty of these evolutionary hypotheses... is NOT ALWAYS EQUALLY STRONG."
"The special indication of stem-forms in detail will ALWAYS be more or less incomplete and hypothetical."
"The evidence on which we build is IMPERFECT, AND ALWAYS WILL BE IMPERFECT."
"The first of our documents, paleontology [evidence of fossils], is EXCEEDINGLY INCOMPLETE."
"The second chief source of evidence, ontogeny [evolution of individual organisms] IS NOT LESS INCOMPLETE."
"The recapitulation of phylogeny [history of descent from other living creatures in bygone ages] by ontogeny is.... NEVER WHOLLY COMPLETE."
"Finally, the third and most valuable source of evidence, comparative anatomy, is also, unfortunately, VERY IMPERFECT."
"We must grant, however, that in the whole stem history of the vertebrates, the long stretch from the Gastrnades and Plaodes up to the oldest Chordonia, remains BY FAR THE MOST OBSCURE SECTION."
And these are the admissions of a man, not too particular in presenting what is mere guess as ascertained fact. Fancy an advocate in the law courts admitting that his
1. Evidence as a whole is imperfect; his
2. First source of evidence "exceedingly incomplete;" his
3. Second source of evidence "not less incomplete;" his
4. Third and MOST VALUABLE source of evidence "very imperfect."
and having the brazen-faced impudence to ask for a verdict in his favor, and being surprised if he fails to get it.
Or imagine a religious teacher coming with such a story, how would he be treated? With chilling neglect, if not with intense indignation.
For such a man to call himself scientific is a travesty of the truth. In the writings of Darwin, Huxley and Haeckel, hypotheses are as plentiful as blackberries in September. Oh, this "sacred" word, hypothesis! It is a magician's wand, a witch's incantation, the garment of ignorance or worse.
When these gentlemen start an hypothesis and then cannot make it work, finding the keys of their guesses do not fit into the lock of facts, why do they not give it up? At first it is an assumption; after that it is imposture.
It makes one indignant to see children of tender years reading the wild guesses of the scientist. We took up a children's newspaper recently, and found an article by a learned man (save the mark), telling the youngsters that all the flowers were evolved from the common groundsel or chickweed. The graceful lily, beautiful tulip, modest violet, sweet scented rose—all came, he told the children, from the common groundsel. Really if the thing were not more serious, one would laugh at such nonsense. All this was given in a tone of lofty knowledge, which no mere layman should dare to question, and that without one attempt to prove his statements. The poor children had to believe it because the writer said it. Another article in the same children's newspaper explained how one particular kind of deer had no antlers because their ancestral males had failed to fight for their mates. Again, not a shred of evidence was brought forward. When our readers have read the second part of this pamphlet as to how all this leads to the undermining of faith in the Bible, they will not wonder that our righteous anger was stirred against this tampering with the innocent minds of the children.