Last November I was passing through Philadelphia and read in an afternoon paper a report of an address delivered in that city by a college professor employed in extension work. Here is an extract from the paper's account of the speech: "Evidence that early men climbed trees with their feet lies in the way we wear the heels of our shoes--more at the outside. A baby can wiggle its big toe without wiggling its other toes--an indication that it once used its big toe in climbing trees." What a consolation it must be to mothers to know that the baby is not to be blamed for wiggling the big toe without wiggling the other toes. It cannot help it, poor little thing; it is an inheritance from "the tree man," so the evolutionists tell us.
And here is another extract: "We often dream of falling. Those who fell out of the trees some fifty thousand years ago and were killed, of course, had no descendants. So those who fell and were _not_ hurt, of course, lived, and so we are never hurt in our dreams of falling." Of course, if we were actually descended from the inhabitants of trees, it would seem quite likely that we descended from those that were _not_ killed in falling. But they must have been badly frightened if the impression made upon their feeble minds could have lasted for fifty thousand years and still be vivid enough to scare us.
If the Bible said anything so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations offered by the Pennsylvania professor.
A few months ago the _Sunday School Times_ quoted a professor in an Illinois University as saying that the great day in history was the day when a water puppy crawled up on the land and, deciding to be a land animal, became man's progenitor. If these scientific speculators can agree upon the day they will probably insist on our abandoning Washington's birthday, the Fourth of July, and even Christmas, in order to join with the whole world in celebrating "Water Puppy Day."
Within the last few weeks the papers published a dispatch from Paris to the effect that an "eminent scientist" announced that he had communicated with the spirit of a dog and learned from the dog that it was happy. Must we believe this, too?