J. Scouller
Published: 2016-06-29
Total Pages: 306
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From the PREFACE. ... fact was clearly recognised by Mr. Huxley that "new truths begin 1 as heresies and end as superstitions" and he held that Darwinism could be no exception to the rule. How true Mr. Huxley's prognostications have proved in this respect the reader will discover in the following pages. It was for this reason, doubtless, that Mr. Huxley thought it would be a good thing if all scientific men were strangled upon reaching the age of sixty, so that they might be prevented from retarding the further progress of scientific truth. But while this would certainly be a most drastic remedy, there can be no question that something of the kind is an absolute necessity. For it must be admitted that the man who has spent h1s whole life in the promulgation of some particular form of truth, whether scientific or religious, becomes constitutionally unable to recognise the fallacies which may be associated therewith, while at the same time he is quite unfitted to grasp new and higher forms of truth when these may chance to arise. The present work is chiefly devoted to an exposure of the fallacies which are inherent in the Darwinian theory of evolution. The existence of such fallacies has long been suspected by many of the foremost thinkers of our time, but hitherto they have found it impossible to give an explicit statement as regards the precise nature of these fallacies. This, to a large extent, has been the result of those irrational theological conceptions which have been so extensively prevalent in the past, but which are now giving place to more reasonable views. In the following pages, however, those readers who have heretofore possessed an instinctive conviction that the Darwinian theory does not afford a true explanation of the origin and growth of the phenomenal world will find the most ample confirmation of such conviction; and further, in the author's exposition of the doctrine of Spiritual Monism they will find a complete vindication of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, as well as a sufficient and, the author thinks, a conclusive reply to Professor Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe.