THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AND DARWINISM
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—It has ever been the Spectator's good tradition to hear both sides of a question, even to " suffering fools gladly." Suffer me some belated comment on Darwinism, the British Association, and the leading article in your issue of September 10th.
Undoubtedly the reports of the Leeds meeting have given fresh impetus to Darwinism, whatever it may stand for to-day, but is it not a mistake to assume that the last word has been spoken, even by so eminent an authority as Sir Arthur Keith ? Surely it is fatal to truth to overlook the existence of another school of scientists, no less competent to sift the evidence, who draw conclusions widely different. Surely all that has happened at Leeds is that the B.A. platform has been employed this year to broadcast afresh the opinions of the Darwinian school, the theory remaining as hitherto, interesting but unproven.
If it be contended that the opposing school is smaller in numbers and influence, it is wise to reflect that one man may often be right where ten are wrong ; a fact of which this year's proceedings, as reported in the Times of September 7th—" Cause of the Ice Ages "—afford painful illustration in the continued suppression- of Drayson's dis- covery of the true motion of the earth in secondary rotation. In 1859 Drayson found that the earth's polar axis was tracing a course in the heavens different from that which had been erroneously assigned to it, and, thanks to his penetration and painstaking accuracy, a motion was recorded so simple and so certain that it can be demonstrated mathematically by anyone who understands the Nautical Almanac and can solve a spherical triangle. His work, moreover, yielded not merely an explanation of the earth's periodic glaciations ; it furnished the bask explanation relatively to which all others are but as trimmings, and which must be reckoned with and allowed for before they can even be properly applied. Nevertheless to this day his indisputable facts are ignored, and, in view of this sixty-eight-year-old boycott—I can use no other word—the gropings of present-day science, exhibited in the sectional report above referred to, make melancholy reading.
Has not something similar occurred in respect of evolution also, in that in the mad rush towards the end of the last century, the researches of the Abbot Mendel, which unmis- takably favour the fixity of separately created species, with variations within species, should have been side-tracked for thirty-five years while the Darwin express was being put through ? Truth will out, and the implications of Mendelism must be reckoned with.
The trouble with science in our day, and the cause of its continued conflict with revealed religion—pace the theologians who would camouflage the ugly fact—is its lack of compre- hensiveness. Time was when the cause of the antagonism lay with the Church herself, and she has reaped her whirlwind of infidelity as the result. But to-day the boot is on the other foot ; it is science that is chiefly responsible for the contradictions and misunderstandings, since a science that ransacks the universe for material facts, yet ignores the facts of faith, is working in blinkers, incapable of shaping a true course, and must sooner or later finish up where it began, on the rocks.
Is it not further significant of this unforgiving attitude towards revealed religion that, under pressure of increasing need for some approach to the unseen, the only approach so far made should be through the back door of spiritism ? Surely it is time for the British Associationois navigating department, to seek for science a genuine
reorientation, letting the biblical account of. creation rest
till they have found it. Recently someone has called for a truce in the battle of evolution, to give that hard-worked
word a hard-earned holiday. If official science would but show a disposition to respond, I venture to say that those who hold conservative views of creation will be found ready and willing to grasp the right hand of fellowship in working :together for the common good of mankind. " Sirs, ye are :brethren ; why do ye wrong one to another ? "—I am,
Reigate. Lt.-Col. R.E. (retired).
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