The Missing Link'

New Zealand Tablet, 1 November 1906, Page 9

The Missing Link'

The discovery of the » missing link * between , man and ape is again .announced— for the tenth, eleventh, or twentieth time, . A few .'years ago, whole battalions -of him were alleged to have been • discovered ' in Darkest Africa by a French scientist. But the coy creatures dematerialised ' Too like the lightning, which doth" cease to be Ere one can say "It lightens "' ; - and in their empty place , '' • - > ' We find but desert rocks and fleeting air.'. And now (in Monday's ,daily papers) comes the further announcement of the discovery, not indeed, of ' the missing link,' but only of .' a_ species of Darwinian missing link-person.' It is not the long-sought, longhoped ' pithecoid ' or ape-like man, but ' a Port Keats - black.' This • Port. Keats black ' is alleged to :have. his big toes deformed "or set out of the notmal fashion: But he is no more a ' link '—much less ►the' supposed missing link— between man and ape than, is Thomas- Alva Edison or King Edward VII., The deformed black is no humanised ape or (if .we, may coin a word) apified m a n •he is a „ true' human being, enjoying those two crowning iaculties which constitute a hopeless and unbridgeable abyss— an impassable specific , difference— between man and any and every form of low_er animal^ namely, the faculty- of rational thought and (its corollary) rational speech, and the faculty of free will. Your dog, cat, parrot,, or anthropoid ape can give (by. sound "of gesture), emotional manifestations of passive sensible impressions (as of suffering or of satisfied animal nature). But they have never yet m v ade the smallest "advance in the direction even of a • * code of signals, much less of language. Man, and man alone upon the planet,, can (to quote Dr. Mivart's words) speak in rational, languagerrcan manifest gen-, eral _ conceptions, and enunciate ' distinct judgments as to ',' the ' what," " the how," " the why/ =. * People have often to be thankful-for small- mercies. Assuming the truth -of -the cable message, the " deformed Port Keats black is an interesting, anatomical curiosity. He might make provision for grey hairs and rainy days by mortgaging his feet (with their alleged thumb-like great toes) to Madame Tussaud's or the Royal College of Physicians. But for those who havebeen, - since Darwin's days, in search of- the * pitnV coid ' man, it must be confessed that the splay-loot' aboriginal is a disappointment. lie leaves the *- links"'? . still missing where they should most abound. The graduated series of the Darwinists, linking -different -forms together, are as totally absent to-day as" in the, years in . which the ' Origin of Species ' was "written.'-' 1 The records of the rocks give us the same types as we have to-day— gaps and all. But if a glorified monkey should be found ? What then ? Just nothing. Atheistic or materialistic evolution would rest precisely whejre it rests " to-day— as a theory which does not fit the facts,* which fails to explain just where explkna- , tion is most urgently needed, and -which leaves, in the ' Seven Enigmas ', several miracles compared with which the Creation would be as simple as the making of " a mud-pie. Pseudo-scientists who forget or ignore their logic, constantly assume that • two different binds of creatures are in lineal ascent or descent with each' other, if only you discover another that stands more or less between them. And thus they- fancy,- that the . discovery of the • missing link ' between man and ape would establish the monkey-origin of man ! It is" droll and unscientific reasoning, in good sooth. The late Mr. Mivart, although a convinced (theistic) evolutionist, declared full many a time that the abyss which separates man from the highest ape is wider far than that which separates the highest ape ..from a rock- . oyster or a field mushroom.. The ' link ' between two such extremes would be a long one indeed. The rocks,, the sands, slimes, and ooze, should be packed — as- a '

' plum '-pudding is packed with" raisins— with the failures' of, the ape 'to become a* man. But the * link ', or links, are missing to this moment. And they artf likely' to remain missing for ever and aye. Moreover, the remains found in the earth's crust show .no evidence whatever of a series in which one- form, of creatures l tails oil '- or gradually merges by, minute changes into another. It is the old_ story : as to types of creatures, the gaps are in, the rocks just where they are in forest- -and field, on sea and shore, in our day. And what shall we say of the fantastic materialistic theory— which all true science damns--that nature progresses as steadily as the march .of fate from simplicity to complexity, from lower to higher and - ever and -ever higher, by mere blind, unguided chance, without purpose, without Intelligence, without "transcendent Power"? The demands of Faith upon our intellect are as. nothing compared- with the demands of. pseudoscientific" unbelief upon our credulity. * -