SIR,—Mr. Gordon Baker, in his interesting letter, suggests that I
have been unduly influenced by Samuel Butler in my anti-Darwinian views. in Science and the Supernatural and in The Flight front Reason I have quoted from the following critics of Darwin. " To us Darwin no more speaks with philosophic authority" (Professor Bateson, presidential address to the British Association, 1914). " We have now the remarkable spectacle that just when many scientific men ate thll agreed that there is no part of the Darwinian system that is of any great influence, and that, as a whole, the .theory is not only unproved but impossible, the ignorant, half-educated masses have acquired the idea that it is to be accepted as a fundamental fact" (Dwight, Professor of Anatomy at Harvard University). " It is pretty clear that we must abandon the Darwinian hypothesis " (Cucnot). " For men of clear intellect Darwinism has long been dead " (Driesch, the great German biologist). " Darwinism is a fiction, a poetical accumulation of probabilities without proof, and of attractive explanations without demonstrations" (Dictionnaire Encyclopedique des Sciences). I have also quoted at great length from Berg, one of the greatest of Russian biologists, whose views tell not only against Darwinism but also against evolution. from Korschinsky, Dewar, Kellog, Heseltine Niigcli and O'Toole. I have mislaid the issue containing Mr. Vernon's letter, but if my memory has not failed me he invited THE CATHOLIC HERALD to obtain an authoritative ruling from some leading scientist. This is to misconceiye the whole problem. There is no " authoritative " ruling obtainable which both sides would accept. We laymen are in the position of jurymen who have to render a verdict after hearing expert witnesses advancing very different opinions. Meanwhile I maintain with confidence that those who still describe themselves as Darwinists have long abandoned Darwin's original theory. " Monism and Darwinism," as Spengler says, " which stirred the best minds of the nineteenth century to such passion have become the world-view proper to country cousins."
Professor Renouf begins by reminding me that he has already replied to my " flagrant misrepresentation of Darwin's character." I have confined myself to statements of fact. Darwin virtually ignored his evolutionary predecessors until attacked by Butler for acquiescing in the conspiracy to represent him as the first to promulgate the theory of evolution. According to Professor Renouf, Canon Baker says, " II Enstein is right both (Galileo and his opponents) were right." I reply that the rightness ,or wrongness of Einstein's theory is totally irrelevant to the Galileo controversy. I challenge Professor Renouf to draw two diagrams, the first showing the relation of the earth's orbit to the sun, as conceived by Galileo, and the second showing the stin's orbit in relation DO the earth as conceived by Galileo's opponents, and then to inform us how Relativity can he said to reconcile these contradictory
Outlet:mist se 'utatsing .sasatpod Su has pointed out, has been responsible for more nonsense than most moderns.
As I never stated or implied that Mivart was an opponent of evolution I cannot see the relevance of his defence of evolution to my criticism of Professor Renouf for citing Mivart, who was the first critic of Darwin, as if he had been one of Darwin's supporters.
ARNOLD LUNN.
The Athenreum.