Page 90 (part 2)

He assures us that it upsets any possibility of the present apes having been the progenitors of mankind. But does it not also negative the bare possibility of the man and anthropoid having had a common -- though, so far, an absolutely theoretical -- ancestor. [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " The Human Species ," p. 111, by de Quatrefages. The respective developments of the human and Simian brains are referred to. "In the ape the temporo-spheroidal convolutions, which form the middle lobe, make their appearance and are completed before the anterior convolutions which form the frontal lobe. In man, the frontal convolutions are, on the contrary, the first to appear, and those of the middle lobe are formed later." ( Ibid. ) [[Vol. 2, Page]] 647 THE FALLACIES OF MODERN SCIENTISTS. Even "Natural Selection" itself is with every day more threatened. The deserters from the Darwinian camp are many, and those who were at one time its most ardent disciples are, owing to new discoveries, slowly but steadily preparing to turn over a new leaf. In the "Journal of the Royal Microscopical Society" for October, 1886, one can read as follows: -- " P HYSIOLOGICAL S ELECTION. -- Mr. G. J. Romanes finds certain difficulties in regarding natural selection as a theory for the origin of adaptive structures. He proposes to replace it by what he calls physiological selection, or the segregation of the fit. His view is based on the extreme sensitiveness of the reproductive system to small changes in the conditions of life, and he thinks that variations in the direction of greater or less sterility must frequently occur in wild species. If the variation be such that the reproductive system, while showing some degree of sterility with the parent form, continues to be fertile within the limits of the varietal form, the variation would neither be swamped by intercrossing nor die out on account of sterility. When a variation of this kind occurs, the physiological barrier must divide the species into two parts. . . . . The author, in fine, regards mutual sterility, not as one of the effects of specific differentiation, but as the cause of it."* An attempt is made to show the above to be a complement of, and sequence to, the Darwinian theory. This is a clumsy attempt at best. The public will soon be made to believe that Mr. C. Dixon's " Evolution without Natural Selection " is also Darwinism -- expanded, as the author certainly claims it to be! But it is like splitting the body of a man into three pieces or various portions of man, and then maintaining that each portion is the identical man as he was before; only -- expanded. Yet the author states on p. 79: -- "Let it be clearly understood that not one single syllable in the foregoing pages has been written antagonistic to Darwin's theory of Natural Selection. All I have done is to explain certain phenomena . . . . the more one studies Darwin's works, the more one is convinced of the truth of his hypothesis." (!!) And before this, on p. 48, he alludes to: -- "the overwhelming array of facts which Darwin gave in support of his hypothesis, and which triumphantly carried the theory of Natural Selection over all obstacles and objections." This does not prevent the learned author, however, from upsetting this theory as "triumphantly," and from even openly calling his work [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * To this an editorial remark adds that an " F.J.B. ," in the Athenaeum -- (No. 3069, Aug. 21, 1886, pp. 242-3) points out that naturalists have long recognised that there are "morphological" and "physiological" species. The former have their origin in men's minds, the latter in a series of changes sufficient to affect the internal as well as the external organs of a group of allied individuals. The "physiological selection" of morphological species is a confusion of ideas; that of physiological species "a redundancy of terms." [[Vol. 2, Page]] 648 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. "Evolution without a Natural Selection," or, in so many words, with Darwin's fundamental idea knocked to atoms in it. As to Natural Selection itself, the utmost misconception prevails among many present-day thinkers who tacitly accept the conclusions of Darwinism. It is, for instance, a mere device of rhetoric to credit "Natural Selection" with the power of originating species. "Natural Selection" is no Entity; but a convenient phrase for describing the mode in which the survival of the fit and the elimination of the unfit among organisms is brought about in the struggle for existence. Every group of organisms tends to multiply beyond the means of subsistence, the constant battle for life -- the "struggle to obtain enough to eat and to escape being eaten" added to the environmental conditions -- necessitating a perpetual weeding out of the unfit. The elite of any stock thus sorted out, propagate the species and transmit their organic characteristics to their descendants. All useful variations are thus perpetuated, and a progressive improvement is effected. But Natural Selection, in the writer's humble opinion, "Selection, as a Power, " is in reality a pure myth; especially when resorted to as an explanation of the origin of species. It is merely a representative term expressive of the manner in which "useful variations" are stereotyped when produced. Of itself, "it" can produce nothing, and only operates on the rough material presented to "it." The real question at issue is: what C AUSE -- combined with other secondary causes -- produces the "variations" in the organisms themselves. Many of these secondary causes are purely physical, climatic, dietary, etc., etc. Very well. But beyond the secondary aspects of organic evolution, a deeper principle has to be sought for. The materialist's "spontaneous variations," and " accidental divergencies" are self-contradictory terms in a universe of "Matter, Force and N ECESSITY." Mere variability of type, apart from the supervisory presence of a quasi-intelligent impulse, is powerless to account for the stupendous complexities and marvels of the human body for instance. The insufficiency of the Darwinists' mechanical theory has been exposed at length by Dr. Von Hartmann among other purely negative thinkers. It is an abuse of the reader's intelligence to write, as does Haeckel, of blind indifferent cells, "arranging themselves into organs." The esoteric solution of the origin of animal species is given elsewhere. Those purely secondary causes of differentiation, grouped under the head of sexual selection, natural selection, climate, isolation, etc., etc., mislead the Western Evolutionist and offer no real explanation whatever of the "whence" of the "ancestral types" which served as the starting point for physical development. The truth is that the [[Vol. 2, Page]] 649 THE OCCULT AND THE MODERN DOCTRINES. differentiating "causes" known to modern science only come into operation after the physicalization of the primeval animal root-types out of the astral.