The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880Various
Religion
The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880
Various
Religion and science -- Periodicals
Now, since evolutionists have learned the secret of mind-making by
training dogs and other animals to certain habits, and giving time for
heredity to transmit those habits, they being "immediately petrified in
brain structure," why should we not go to work and bring about a
millennial glory, at least by the third or fourth generation? If so much
has been overcome as lies between man and the tadpole, with the tadpole
capital only to work upon, perhaps we might, with our present capital,
bring into existence a race of gods. Why not? We are taught that
"instinct is habit petrified in brain structure and transmitted by
heredity," that it is, consequently, "organized ancestral experiences
that are the source of instinct, but not always." Why this modification
in the teachings of evolutionists? Do they not know that the
acknowledgment of the existence of an original instinctive endowment
breaks down the whole theory of mind-being from environments? And what
right have Atheists to claim instinct as an original endowment, in
certain cases? The very idea is destructive of their speculation, for in
order to an original endowment, as they term it, over and above that
which is the result of ancestral experiences petrified in brain
structure and transmitted, there must be the endowment, that which
endows, and the endowed. These three things stand or fall together. But
why should they claim this exception of an original endowment? The
answer is easy. Facts that are utterly against them are known to exist
in the world of instincts. We have an example in the instinct of the
honey bee. Neither the drone nor the queen ever built a cell. So this is
conceded to be an original endowment. O, ye evolutionists! will you tell
us where this cell-building instinct came from? You claim that it was,
or is, an original endowment. _From whom?_ Again you tell us that
instinct depends upon brain structure in every instance; then what is
the difference between instinct and intellect or mind? You tell us that
mind also depends on brain structure, and you say that intelligence is
unlike instinct, because it works by experience, not ancestral, but, on
the contrary, by individual experience.
Then we have it thus:
First. Instinct works by ancestral experience, petrified in brain
structure, and transmitted.
Second. Mind works by individual and not ancestral experience.
Third. Instinct is sometimes an original endowment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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