Truth Will Prevail – Elmina Slenker, 7/27/1888

Republished from our predecessor publication Lucifer the Light Bearer

The last number of the Edinburgh Review contains a review of The Life and Letters of Darwin, recently
published in London. The publication of these volumes has been the occasion for quite a thorough
overhauling of Darwin and Darwinism by the whole herd of “scientific apes” who have been jabbering
on the subject so long. But Darwin seems to have had a very correct idea of the value of the opinions
of such apes. A year before he died he wrote to a friend: “You have expressed my inward conviction
that the universe is not the result of chance. But then, with me the horrid doubt always arises whether
the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the lower animals, are of any value,
or are at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any
convictions in such a mind?” It is no surprise, then, to hear his reviewer say that “his system enthrones
unreason as lord of the universe.” The creed practically favored by it is that which regards the world
as blindly self-developed; God as a phantom of an ape-like mind, and loudly proclaims the essential
bestiality of man. The highest moral and intellectual efforts of the noblest and purest of our race are,
according to Darwinism, but the modified instincts and desires of brutes. The Central Presbyterian
says, “The essence of Darwin’s theory is the origin of species by the fortuitous action of the destructive
powers of nature on individuals which differ by minute, indefinite, haphazard variations in all directions.”
The reviewer declares that the Darwinian theory of evolution is now in a moribund condition. He says:
“Darwinism grew like Jonah’s gourd, and like that same climbing plant is destined to wither. For the
overwhelming majority of men of common sense desire to uphold morality, to strengthen conscience,
and to develop the higher qualities of our human nature; and when they at length wake up to the full
meaning of that to which they have too hastily adhered, they will with no less speed utterly discard it,
nor will they want leaders among the men of science of the future.

Already Darwin’s hypothesis of pangenesis* is as good as dead and buried. His theory of coral reefs, which
he regarded with quite special pride and satisfaction, is being silently or avowedly repudiated. And now his
theory of the origin of species, about which, before he passed away, he sometimes spoke in vacillating tones,
is also on its way to the lumber room of disordered theories.” The above slip I cut from the Pulaski News,
and as it is a fair sample of what some of the best critics against evolution say regarding the ideas of Darwin,
it is well for it to be placed before liberal thinkers, that they may see how weak and paltry are the arguments
(!) resorted to by the Anti-Evolutionists. Such contemptuous flings may carry weight with those who are
unacquainted with Darwin’s real feelings and opinions, but they are the veriest nonsense to those who
are well grounded in the truth as Darwin really conceived and displayed it. In writing to Lyell in 1859, Darwin
says: “I have reflected a good deal on what you say on the necessity of continued intervention of creative
power. I cannot see the necessity, and its admission, I think, would make the theory of natural selection
valueless. Grant a single archetypal creature, like the mud-fish or Lepidosiren, with the five senses and some
vestige of mind, and I believe natural selection will account for the production of every vertebrate animal.”
Prof. Huxley, in speaking of the reception of Darwin’s Origin of Species, says: “I doubt if there was any man
then living who had a better right to expect that anything he might choose to say, on such a question as the
origin of species, would be listened to with profound attention and discussed with respect; and there was
certainly no man whose personal character should have afforded a better safeguard against attack, instinct
with malignity and spiced with shameless impertinences. Yet such was the portion of one of the kindest and
truest men that it ever was my good fortune to know; and years had to pass away before misrepresentation,
ridicule, and denunciation ceased to be the most notable constituents of the majority of the multitudinous
criticisms of his work which poured from the press.”

He also says: “I do not think that there is a single zoologist or paleontologist among the active workers of this
generation who is other than an evolutionist, profoundly influenced by Darwin’s views.” The quotation concerning
our inherited monkey-mind does not at all invalidate the fact of Darwin’s faith in the Origin of Species or any
of his established theories, but conclusively proves how firmly he believed in the “bestiality of man.” Is it not
far more to our credit to have risen step by step from the lowest to the highest than to have been “created
but little lower than the angels,” and then have “fallen from grace” and become a far worse thing than a
brute ever could be, as thousands of men really have been? I have yet to learn when Darwin ever spoke in
“vacillating tones” of the Origin of Species. It was the one question whereon he was firm and unyielding,
even when opposed by men of science who were his most prized friends. To him truth was the highest
good, and even friendship, fame, and renown were all as dross when weighed in the scale with real
facts. Instead of the Origin of Species being “on its way to the lumber room of discarded theories,”
it is being introduced into the schoolroom, the home, and even the almanacs. It is a household deity,
and so well enthroned that even the Edinburgh Review will find it impossible to overthrow it. It chimes
in so well with every science and every growth of every law or notion. Call it by any name you
will—evolution is fact and does prevail.