[Illustration: Noble Smithson] Smithson’s Theory _of_ Special Creation _by_ NOBLE SMITHSON KNOXVILLE: _Victor Publishing Company_ _1911_ _Copyright 1911_ By NOBLE SMITHSON _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages_ PUBLISHER’S NOTICE A copy of this book will be mailed, postage prepaid, upon receipt of $1.00 VICTOR PUBLISHING CO. KNOXVILLE. :: TENNESSEE _To the Memory of my Father and Mother John Greene Smithson and Ann Ladd Smithson_ _To the Reader:_ If you care to write me your view of my theory as set forth in the following pages, I shall be pleased to hear from you. NOBLE SMITHSON. Preface A critical reader of the works of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel, Romanes, Weismann, Mivart, Cope and other writers, on organic evolution, will find that there is much diversity in the views of these writers. Darwin believes that the first one, or the first few, animals and plants were directly and specially made by the Creator; Haeckel says the primordial forms arose “by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter.” Referring to the origin of life, Romanes says that “science is not in a position to furnish so much as suggestion upon the subject.” Neither Huxley, Weismann, Mivart nor Cape has anything to say on the origin of life. No two of these writers agree as to the work of the “factors” of evolution. According to Darwin, Romanes and Weismann, natural selection did substantially the entire work of evolving all the species of animal and plant. But Cope, and other evolutionists of the Lamarckian school, hold that use, disuse, pressure, friction and motion did it. Weismann argues that the inheritance of “acquired characters” is impossible; while Spencer, Romanes and other evolutionists say that Weismann’s views are highly absurd and would entirely destroy the theory of evolution; and I think they are correct in this view. There are many evolutionists for and against Weismann’s theory of heredity. Writers on evolution differ as widely on other important questions, as on these.