19. A STAGGERING SPECULATION


The theory that all plants and animals have descended from one
primordial germ, is staggering to the mind. If so, how was it? Did
this original germ split in two, like some disease germs, one of them
the beginning of plant life, and the other the head of all animal
life? Or, did vegetation only, grow from this first germ for ages, and
then some of it turn into species of animals? As if the guess were
worthy of attention, some are ready to assert that early vegetation
Algae turned into animals. Did plants become animals somewhere along
the way? Or did animals, somewhere along the way, turn into plants?
How long did they interbreed before the gap became too wide? Where are
the descendants of the union between plants and animals? If animals
were first developed from this first germ, what did they live on while
there was no vegetation? What folly is like the folly of the
evolutionist who claims that such weird speculation is science?

Great gaps between the principal divisions of the animal world are
fatal to this speculation, which rests upon nothing but the wish that
it were so. Links are lacking between marine and amphibian animals;
reptiles and birds; reptiles and mammals; between apes and man. Of
course, we would find fossils of millions of these links if there were
any. The missing links are necessary to the scheme. Is there one
chance in a million that evolution is a true hypothesis?



20. SEX