The Portal of Evolution: Being a Glance through the Open Portal of Evolution at Some of the Mysteries of Nature

Abstract

THE author of this book begins chap. 1. with the words: “My aim in writing this treatise has been to avoid making it in any way a scientific work.” We are bound to say that he has succeeded. For what we opened with the eager hope of getting some fresh light on the factual problems of evolution turns out to be a sheer eccentricity. It is a serious but futile elaboration of extravagant hypotheses about the intermarryingof the diverse attributes of the Trinity. It is a preposterous attempt to illumine facts by fictions and to talk two languages at once. Of the author's scientific incompetence a glimpse is given in a statement in the 5rst chapter: “Embryology has established beyond dispute that in the early stages of our conception, within our mother's womb we again assume the types of worms, fishes, animals, and in some cases of plants that did their part in evolving our present existence.” But a glimpse of something worse is given in the fundamental statement: “The intermarrying of the attributes of God's personalities has indeed placed in my hands a key that would, in time, with thought and study, enable mankind to unlock the door and enter the portal of Evolution, and ultimately to be able to understand divine revelations…” We do not wish to be too hard upon a treatise so obviously serious and well-intentioned, especially as we are assured that “it is only during the last one hundred years that the property of understanding has dawned upon man,” but we cannot help feeling that there has been a sad waste of paper here.

The Portal of Evolution: Being a Glance through the Open Portal of Evolution at Some of the Mysteries of Nature.

By a Fellow of the Geological and Zoological Societies. Pp. 295 + ii. (London: Heath, Cranton, Ltd., 1918.) Price 16s. net.