E-text prepared by Kurt A. T. Bodling, formerly Director of Library Services at Concordia College, Bronxville, New York, USA EVOLUTION. An Investigation and a Criticism by TH. GRAEBNER, Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo. Milwaukee, Wis. Northwestern Publishing House, 1921. _Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum Ens. Linne._ To the Memory of my teacher (New Ulm, 1892) John Schaller Educator, Theologian, Student of Science these chapters are dedicated by The Author TABLE OF CONTENTS. Chapter 1. An Outline of the Theory...11 Definition--Historical Review--The Darwinian Hypothesis--Lines of Evidence--The Descent of Man--The Nebular Hypothesis--The Origin of Life--The Bearing of Evolution on Christianity. Chapter 2. Unexplained Origins...29 The Origin of the Universe--The Origin of Life--Biological Barriers-- Man. Chapter 3. The Testimony of the Rocks...47 Chapter 4. The Fixity of Species...62 Chapter 5. Rudimentary Organs...70 Chapter 6. Instinct...74 Chapter 7. Heredity...80 Chapter 8. A Scientific Creed Outworn...87 Chapter 9. Man...94 Chapter 10. The Verdict of History...113 Chapter 11. Evidences of Design...124 Chapter 12. The Fatal Bias...141 PREFATORY. I first read Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" in the library of my sainted uncle, John Schaller, at New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1892. I did not comprehend all of it then, a cause, to me, of considerable chagrin, for which I later found some consolation in the opinion of Dr. Frederick Lynch, who pronounces Darwin's epochal work "one of the two most difficult books in the English language." But like many others, I understood enough of Darwin's book to catch glimpses of the grandeur of the conception which underlies its argumentation. It was then that my beloved uncle, out of that wide and accurate reading which so frequently astonished his friends, and with that penetrating dialectic of his, opened my eyes to certain fallacies in Darwin's argument, especially to the fatal weakness of the chapter on Instinct. The reading of St. George Mivart's book "The Genesis of Species" later convinced me of the accuracy of my uncle's judgment. But the fascination of the subject persisted, and for a time Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy," by the comprehensiveness of its induction and its vast array of data, exercised its thrall. Alfred Russel Wallace's "Darwinism," Huxley's "Lectures on Evolution," Tyndall's "The Beginning of Things," Grant Allen's "The Evolutionist at Large," Eimer's "Orthogenesis," Clodd's "Story of Creation," occupied me in turn, until the apodictic presentation of John Fiske's Essays on Darwinism, no less than the open and haggard opposition to Christianity which prevails in Huxley's "Science and Hebrew Tradition" and in Spencer's chapters on "The Unknowable" (so the Synthetic Philosophy denominates God), caused a revulsion of sentiment,--the anti-religious bias of evolution