Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes:

Underscores “” before and after a word or phrase indicate italics_ in the original text. Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals. Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs. Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.

The Illustrated Story of Evolution

BY Marshall J. Gauvin

President of the American Secular Union; Author of “Is There a Real God?”, “Is There a Life After Death?” etc.

New York Peter Eckler Publishing Company 1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY THE PETER ECKLER PUBLISHING CO.

Printed in the U. S. A.

TO MY WIFE

Whose fine literary taste applauds the slightest beauty of a phrase, and whose interest in this book was helpful in its preparation.

Introduction

The Greek philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, more than two thousand years ago, entertained the notion that all things have been developed from primitive beginnings. This view was shared in the fourth century of the Christian era by St. Augustine, probably the greatest of the church “Fathers.” Then came the Dark Age,—an intellectual night of a thousand years—an era when reason and science were buried in the grave of superstition,—and at its close, the Revival of Learning, the dawn of the modern period.

In that golden Renaissance of rational thought and scientific speculation, philosophical thinkers—Bruno, Campanella and others—influenced by the theories of the Greeks and by the astronomical discoveries of Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo, sought to explain the universe as an unfoldment from a simple, early condition of matter. But such speculation was denounced as dangerous, and Bruno died a martyr in the flames. Still the idea that there has been an evolution in nature persisted and grew, and the writings of Spinoza in Holland, of Locke in England, of Kant in Germany, of Lamarck in France,—to mention but a few philosophers—encouraged men to think that the secret of existence lay in the fact of growth.

Then came the greatest of books on the development of living things. In 1859, Darwin gave the world his “Origin of Species,” a work which laid the foundation of the science of evolution. Earlier thinkers had groped and guessed with little knowledge of Nature’s laws. But Darwin had discovered the laws of organic life, and, with an amazing array of evidential facts patiently observed and gathered in a score of years, he was able to support his view that species have been evolved “by means of natural selection” through “the preservation or favored races in the struggle of life.”

In the interest of the six-days creation legend, a storm of theological wrath assailed the great man’s head. Knowing that truth was on his side, the saint of science paid no heed to slander and patiently worked on. And in twenty-three years he wrought a greater, a more farreaching revolution in the thoughts of intelligent mankind than was ever accomplished by any other of the sons of men; and when he died, England was glad to honor his dust with burial in her sacred Westminster Abbey.

Evolution is as firmly established to-day as the fact of gravitation. The intellect of the whole world acclaims it as the one and only principle that explains the phenomena of existence. True it is, that many naturalists disagree with Darwin with respect to some of the details of the process by which evolution has been brought about, but these men are one and all thoroughgoing evolutionists. There is no man of science living who believes in special creation. Every university now teaches evolution.

Every science studies its facts to-day, in the light of growth and change from simplicity to complexity. The astronomer traces the course of evolution in the heavens; the geologist follows the path of evolution in the crust of the earth; the biologist threads the process of growth through succeeding forms of life; the psychologist considers the gradual emergence of mind from the lowly animal to civilized man; the sociologist elucidates the progressive development of society from its rude barbaric dawn; the inquiries of the anthropologist illuminate the evolution of religion, of government, of law. Every phase of existence and life and thought opens its treasury of secrets when touched by evolution’s master key. Where all the facts point resistlessly to one conclusion, that conclusion must perforce be accepted as true. The foundations of evolution are laid in all the active phenomena of nature and the super-structure is being fashioned by all the facts of growth and change.

The purpose of this little book is to set before the busy reader some of the principal facts illustrating the evolution of the universe and of living things.

MARSHALL J. GAUVIN Pittsburgh, Pa., August 30, 1921.

List of Illustrations

Charles Darwin Frontispiece Fig. 1.—The Great Nebula in Orion 15 Fig. 2.—The Great Spiral Nebula 17 Fig. 3.—An Elongated Irregular Nebula 19 Fig. 4.—Lunar Craters: Hyginus and Albategnius 21 Fig. 5.—The Cluster in Hercules 23 Fig. 6.—A Pillar of Stratified Rocks 25 Fig. 7.—Segmentation of the Fertilized Ovum and Gastrulation 27 Fig. 8.—Cambrian Fossils and Upper Silurian Fossils 29 Fig. 9.—The Amphioxus 31 Fig. 10.—The Earliest Known Form of Fish and Three Other Early Forms of Fishes 33 Fig. 11.—Lampreys—The Mouth of a Lamprey 35 Fig. 12.—Lung Fishes 37 Fig. 13.—The Flying Fish 39 Fig. 14.—The Climbing Perch 41 Fig. 15.—The Evolution of the Frog 43 Fig. 16.—The Head of the Famous Archaegosaurus 45 Fig. 17.—The Ceratosaurus 47 Fig. 18.—The Archaeopteryx 49 Fig. 19.—The Duck-bill, known in Australia as the Platypus 51 Fig. 20.—A Kangaroo with her Young One in her Pouch 53 Fig. 21.—The Pariasaurus Baini 55 Fig. 22.—The Ring-tailed Lemur of Madagascar 57 Fig. 23.—The Slow Loris—another type of Lemur 59 Fig. 24.—The Baboon 61 Fig. 25.—The White-handed Gibbon 63 Fig. 26.—A Female Gorilla 65 Fig. 27.—Male Giant Gorilla 67 Fig. 28.—The Baldheaded Chimpanzee 69 Fig. 29.—The Skeleton of Man and of the Four Anthropoid Apes 71 Fig. 30.—Skull of the Fossil Ape-man of Java 73 Fig. 31.—A Restoration of the Neanderthal Man 75 Fig. 32.—Evolution of the Proboscidea 77 Fig. 33.—Eohippus, the “Dawn Horse,” from the Lower Eocene Rocks 79 Fig. 34.—Fossil Antlers 81 Fig. 35.—Antlers of One Deer at Different Stages of Their Development 83 Fig. 36.—Embryos of Four Mammals 85 Fig. 37.—Tail of a Six-Months-old Boy 87 Fig. 38.—The Vermiform Appendix in the Orang, in Man, and in the Human Foetus 89 Fig. 39.—The Rudimentary Muscles of the Ear 91 Fig. 40.—Hair Tracts on Arms of Man and Ape 93 Fig. 41.—The Head of Miss Julia Pastrana 95 Fig. 42.—The Brains of Anthropoid Apes and Men 99 Fig. 43.—Joe and Sallie at Home 103 Fig. 44.—The Genealogical Tree of Humanity 107 Fig. 45.—Two Pigs 111 Fig. 46.—Dogs 115 Fig. 47.—Pigeons 117

The Illustrated Story of Evolution

Our fathers, many ages ago, looked out upon the world with mingled feelings of reverence and fear. They saw the sun that dazzled their eyes with the brightness of his beams as he flamed his way across the path of day; they saw the white light of the moon, hung like a spirit lamp amid the clouds that sailed over the face of night; they saw the stars, now spangling the darkness with the glory of their sheen, now veiling their faces with the sable void; they saw the infinite variety of plants, the animals of every size and form; they saw man himself, the master of the earth; and they would know something of the mighty scheme. They did not dream of natural law, but they were curious. Destitute of science, they were full of wonder. What could be the driving power back of what they saw? Existence was a challenge. They must essay an explanation. Their minds refused to rest content in ignorance. They must know how things came to be.

It was the age of gods. Gods were in the wind and rain, in the flood and flame, in the roar of the thunder and the echo of the forest gorge, in the harvest that sustained and the disease that destroyed—in everything that helped or hurt the sons of men. Man could do things; the gods could do things too. Man could build a home; the gods could build a world. So reasoned our primitive fathers. Of this reasoning were born the creation stories of the ancient religions; and these stories, coming down to our day, have fixed the beliefs of countless generations of men.

In one of these creation myths, regarded as of divine authority because it is found in the Bible, we are naively told that the world with its myriad forms of life and the star-studded universe beyond, were created in six days; and as this childish story is inseparably interwoven with popular religious notions, millions still regard it as sacredly true.

But this is an age of science, of a growing knowledge of reality. During the last few generations, the facts of nature have been studied as they never were studied before. As a result of this study, nature has yielded to man’s inquiring mind a growing knowledge of her methods. This knowledge is now accepted by the educated world as the science of evolution.

This illustration and the four that follow are reprinted from Sir Robert Stawell Ball’s “The Earth’s Beginning,” with acknowledgments to Cassel & Co., London, and D. Appleton & Co., New York.]

We can imagine only two ways by which the world and its forms of life came into existence. One is to suppose that all things were created out of nothing, and made perfect at once, by a being of infinite power and intelligence who never had beginning. That is the biblical, the miraculous, the supernatural way. The other is to suppose that the raw material always existed, and that all things have been developed from primitive origins, the higher forms gradually emerging by evolution out of the lower. That is the scientific, the natural way. The first view is an assumption utterly devoid of support. The evidence proves that nothing was made, that things have grown.