Oakfield High School - Oak Leaves Yearbook (Oakfield, WI)

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same rules in natural selection that man uses in his artificial and intentionla selection. As the farmer from year to year selects his best and healthiest looking coi n for his seed, so the plant develops those qualities which can produce a stronger structure and better enable it to perform its life’s work. The seedless orange is a good illustration of what man can do by selecting every year certain plants containing the characteristics desired. Therefore the increase in complexity of a plant or animal over its parents is due to natural selection. The struggle for existance in plants and the lower animals is very much the same as it is in the life of man. They meet with many obstacles and foes which may be overcome or avoided. They have to withstand many changes in their environment; thus some plants can adapt themselves to a changing in environment. On the other hand there are those who cannot thus meet the problems of life caused by a change of conditions. The former will thrive while the latter must perish in the struggle. This stug-gle for existence also develops many characteristics in plants and animals which enable them to protect themselves against their foes, as the deer’s horns, the lion’s claws, or the sword of the sword-fish. During the life of every organic being changes will occur because of its environment etc. If these characteristics are useful and necessary in the struggle for life, then thru the principle of inheritance these necessary traits will be given to its offspring. Each plant receives the characteristics of its parent together with the qualities they obtained during their life and it endows its offspring with its inherited features and those gained during its life; thus each plant receives the sum total of the characteristics of all its ancestors. A duck may be made to acquire nearly all the traits of a chicken if kept from the water and in the environment of the chicken but if after a number of generations, a duck is taken to the water, it would swim as its ancestors had. Thus a quality may lie dormant for years but can be awakened if put into the right environment. This is the law of heredity. From all these principles it can readily be seen that there must have been some original being from which all our different divisions of plants or animals have arisen. Darwin says that man has developed thru a number of different species from the monkey. This does not necessarily mean from what we know now as the monkey because the species may have been greatly changed thru the thousands of years it has taken for the development of man. This theory of Darwin’s may be merely a solution by hypothesis but it is substantiated by thousands of facts and by numerous illustrations found in the past and present natural history. One of the arguments that is commonly used against the theory of evolution is that, if this theory be true, then the Bible is not. Darwin’s expressions about religion are very general but since in his works we do not find and utterance contrary and hostile to religion we have a right to rank him among those who are convinced of a harmony between the realms of the religious and natural worlds. Alex Braun, a botonist has well said, “Some say that the descent theory of man denies creation and it is true. The Darwinians themselves cause this opinion by contrasting creation and development as irreconcilable ideas. But this contrast does not really exist. for as soon as we look upon creation as a divine effect, not merely be-

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And say to all the world: ‘This was a man.’ ” Can anyone review the lives of these four great men and consider the services which they have rendered to the nation and the noble spirit with which they were rendered and then say that they are not Our Nation’s Idols? ' Flora Morgan. THE EVOLUTION OF MAN. The question regarding the origin and development of man is one of great moment and has greatly attracted the attention of scientific investigators during the past century. Some of our greatest scientists have spent their lives in the attempt at solving this great question. For hundreds of years science and religion had been so accustomed to see the origin of species and especially the appearance of man on the face of the earth hidden in impenetrable and unapproachable mystery that every attempt at clearing up this mystery naturally appeared to both as an attack upon the creative activity of God. The investigators of the past years have proven that the theories regarding the origin and evolution of man are not only in accordance with the Bible but can be used as proof of the validity of that work. The theory of Evolution, as given by Darwin, contains nearly the same ideas that all succeeding him have tried to prove and to show that it is in friendly relation to the Bible. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace were the first scientists to bring a theory of evolution before the minds of the people. They arrived at their conclusions at the same time and separately proposed them. Darwin’s theory as published then and later was composed of five principles:—first, the survival of the fittest of plants an animals; second, their increase in complexity; third, their struggle for existence; fourth, the process of heredity; and fifth, the development of man from lower animals. All plants and animals do not live forever, for, if they did, the earth would be soon over-crowded with them. It is only the strongest and the healthiest that do live. Thus when a plant produces three seeds, one of these seeds may be better adapted to the environment than the other two. The weakness of the two may be such that the plant produced will be unable to adapt itself to the unfavorable environment. The resulting structure will then be either exceedingly weak and inefficient or will quickly perish. The inability of these plants to live illustrates the principle of the survival of the fittest. Every plant or animal has its own individual differences from others of its own species. Every plant structure is the steady accumulation thru natural selection of those characteristics which are beneficial to the individual and give rise to all the more important modifications of structure by which the innumerable beings on the earth areablc to struggle with each other ami by which they are better enabled to survive. Nature uses the

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longing to the past, or appearing in single abrupt movements, but connected and universally present in time, we can seek and find it nowhere else I ut in the natural history of creation. Natural history looked upon from its inner side is nothing else but the farther carrying out of the history of creation.” Take the position of the Holy Scriptures regarding development in general. The work of the six days themselves are in their succession nothing else but a development, a permanent differentiation of that which was not separated before, a continuous unfolding of the more simple until a more complex and always progressing preparation of the globe for newer and higher forms of existence, until finally man appears. The Bible itself is in friendly relation to the evolution theory. It does not permit animals to come forth from plants altho the later represent the lower and the former the higher forms and that even both kingdoms come forth from the inorganic of the earth. The Scriptures teach a creation of the world in six days. Are there not evidences in the Bible account itself which show that the author did not take these as creative earthly days of twenty-four hours' These days of the week are also, “Days of God,” for that which makes our earthly days was not created until the fourth day of creation. These days have no night, “And the evening and the morning were the first day.” (Gen. 1, 5.) What did God do in the six nights of his creation? The author did not mention night, because these days had no night and they had none, because as days of God they could have none, because with God there is no night. The end of each of the six days is mentioned but not of the seventh day. Therefore this seventh day must have been of long duration. This leads us to think that the six proceeding days must have exceeded the duration of the earthly days, for in St. Peter’s second letter we find the words, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day.” Religion and mortality have their automnous principle and realm which is not at all obliged to borrow tin1 proof of its truth from the present condit ions and degree of our knowledge, but carries it in itself although it stands in fruitful reciprocal action of the other realms of knowledge and life. The great evolutionists may not be very near the truth but are in common with a large and increasing body of scientific men. that are all agreed as to one thing; that evolution is a great and established fact, a wide and valid induction from the observed order of nature, tin complete elucidation of which is the grand scientific task of the future. Claude Craooe.