Noble Smithson
Smithson’s Theory
of
Special Creation
by
NOBLE SMITHSON
KNOXVILLE:
Victor Publishing Company
1911
Copyright 1911
By NOBLE SMITHSON
All rights reserved, including that of translation
into foreign languages
PUBLISHER’S NOTICE
A copy of this book will be mailed, postage
prepaid, upon receipt of $1.00
VICTOR PUBLISHING CO.
KNOXVILLE. :: TENNESSEE
To the Memory of my
Father and Mother
John Greene Smithson
and
Ann Ladd Smithson
To the Reader: If you care to write me yourview of my theory as set forth in the following pages,I shall be pleased to hear from you.
Noble Smithson.
Preface
A critical reader of the works of Darwin, Huxley,Spencer, Haeckel, Romanes, Weismann, Mivart, Copeand other writers, on organic evolution, will find thatthere is much diversity in the views of these writers.Darwin believes that the first one, or the first few,animals and plants were directly and specially madeby the Creator; Haeckel says the primordial formsarose “by spontaneous generation from inorganic matter.”Referring to the origin of life, Romanes says that“science is not in a position to furnish so much assuggestion upon the subject.” Neither Huxley, Weismann,Mivart nor Cape has anything to say on theorigin of life. No two of these writers agree as to thework of the “factors” of evolution. According toDarwin, Romanes and Weismann, natural selectiondid substantially the entire work of evolving all thespecies of animal and plant. But Cope, and otherevolutionists of the Lamarckian school, hold that use,disuse, pressure, friction and motion did it.
Weismann argues that the inheritance of “acquiredcharacters” is impossible; while Spencer, Romanesand other evolutionists say that Weismann’sviews are highly absurd and would entirely destroythe theory of evolution; and I think they are correctin this view. There are many evolutionists for andagainst Weismann’s theory of heredity. Writers onevolution differ as widely on other important questions,as on these.
Many of the theories of the evolutionists are quiteabsurd. Among these may be mentioned the theoryof “protective mimicry” and “sexual selection.” Sotheir belief that the blind “factors,” working by chanceand accident, have differentiated one part of a minuteindividual into a set of male sexual organs, and anotherpart of the same individual into a set of femalesexual organs, as in hermaphroditic animals andplants, appears to be quite preposterous. So it is impossibleto believe these “factors” have differentiatedone-half of the individuals of each species of mammalinto males and the other half into females, forexample into men and women. If time and space pe