I bought an 1880 copy of “The Problem of Human Life (Embracing the „Evolution of
Sound‟, and „Evolution Evolved‟, with a Review of the Six Great Modern Scientists,
Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Haeckel, Helmoholtz, and Mayer)”, by A. Wilford Hall (Hall
and Co., New York). IN 524 pages, he presents his arguments demolishing (in his
words) the theory of descent of life from previous forms, and the wave theory of sound.
The arguments (including classic and current I.D./Creationist arguments such as
evolution means incredibly improbable random events, impossibility of organs to evolve,
etc. ) make great reading, but the reviews are even better.
dan.johnson@uleth.ca
P. 22
...Theistic evolutionists, thus driven to the wall of consistency, are forced to admit,
however hard they may struggle against it, that if whales were “created” by development
from other animals, man must have been “created” by the same process. Although the
Rev. Joseph Cook evidently dreads the logical consequences of this conclusion - the
unavoidable outgrowth of the “new philosophy”, whether theistic or atheistic in form -
yet he makes many statements in his lectures which unintentionally but plainly point to
Darwin‟s unabridged views, that man, as well as the ape, the puppy, and the tortoise, is
the lineal descendent of the fish...
And it is even now morally certain if these sincere Christian workers could be convinced
that their surrender to evolution had been made on grounds which were wholly
insufficient, and that the theory, even in its mildest form, has not one fairly understood
class of scientific facts, such as embryology, rudimentary organs, reversions,
paleontology, comparative anatomy, etc., upon which its claims can rest, that they would
be glad to avail themselves of the opportunity of at once appealing to the court of heaven
for an everlasting cancellation of their mistaken compact with Darwinism.
Chapter V.
... A locust must exert millions of tons of mechanical force by the motion of its legs if the
wave-theory be true...
P. 73 ... I now come to the work of argument and proof, and shall endeavor to satisfy the
reader, in this and the following chapter, however exacting he may be, ... that the current
and universally accepted wave-theory of sound is demonstrably a pure and simple fallacy
of science, founded upon the most superficial misapprehensions of Nature and her laws,
... wave-motion. (250 pages later)... If these facts have really driven the wave-theory of
sound to the wall, and demonstrated it to be scientific fallacy, there is not a scientist who
would not be willing to admit that the undulatory theories of light and heat are involved
in the same catastrophe, and must share the same demolition...
Chapter IX. Evolution - Its Strongest Arguments
p. 407
I therefore aver that in view of this unanswerable fact of all the physical ingredients of a
man‟s body being displaced and substituted many times during each mature human life,
and in view of the table just given showing the inconceivable dilution of ancestral blood
after only one hundred generations, if such blood continues at all, it is utterly impossible
for any sane mind to believe in Darwin‟s theory of reversions to marsupial organisms.
And hence it follows that this great and conclusive fact in support of Darwinism is utterly
broken down, and his theory, so far as it is concerned, is completely driven to the wall. Is
this not an irresistible conclusion?
p. 448-449
... evolutionists hold that whales and all fish-mammals were alike degraded from land
quadrupeds and hoofed animals to their present deteriorated condition... Evolutionists
seem to claim the right to teach anything, however absurd, in order to explain the
difficulties met with in defending evolution, and then expect people to quit thinking, and
passively subscribe it to “science”. Thus with all the apparent nonchalance imaginable,
they would have us believe that natural selection spent a hundred million years in
evolving a fish into a bull, horse, elk, or some other “hoofed animal,” and then spent
another hundred million years in degrading it back “into the shape of a fish,” leaving
behind only the rudimentary leg-bones and incisors found in the embryo to prove its
remarkable history! Yet they take no account of the fact that retrogression from the land
quadruped back into the fish is the very opposite of evolution...
Chapter XI. Difficulties and inconsistencies of Evolution
p. 514
... the law is inevitable, as laid down by Mr. Darwin, that the “New and improved
varieties will inevitably supplant and exterminate the older.” Thus, the self-stultifying
principle of evolution under natural selection, as expounded by the founder of the system,
involves the necessary and unavoidable fact that man should now be the only living
species on this earth, since every form below him through which his line of descent has
progressed would have successively and “inevitably” succumbed and been exterminated
as soon as each improved from had made its appearance! The fact, therefore, that we now
have a hundred thousand species of living animals known to zoology, all of which have
survived that inevitable extermination which is and must be the necessary result of
evolution, if it be a true theory, shows conclusively that we have one hundred thousand
living witnesses now on earth demonstrating the utter fallacy of Mr. Darwin‟s
hypothesis!
Reviews listed on the final pages:
Dexter (Iowa) Herald, edited by Prof. Henry Cox, Professor of Physical Science.
We believe it to be the ablest scientific work written in a hundred years. It is strong
enough to refute, utterly, the specious pleadings of Darwin and Haeckel for evolution and
spontaneous generation, and the sophistry of Professor Tyndall on Heat as a mode of
Motion. The first division of the book is given to a discussion of the wave-theory of
sounds; and so completely does he show the absurdity of that hypothesis, that we feel
mortified to reflect that for fifteen years we taught it for science.
Illustrated Christian Weekly
... it clearly annihilates the last standing-ground of Darwinism as a scientific theory.
Medical Brief, St. Louis, Mo.
Physicians who believe in the theories of Darwin, Tyndall, Haeckel, &c., should by all
means procure this book and read it. It knocks the evolution doctrine of the so-called
scientists to smithereens.
Kansas City Daily Journal
We believe when the candid reader lays down this book he will concede that the wave-
theory, at least, has little besides the names of these great men [Tyndall, Helmholtz and
Mayer] to support it.
Brethren at Work, Lanark, Ill.
...He catches the chirp of a cricket or the stridulation of a locust, and draws from it a
demonstration that hopelessly shatters the very foundations of materialism.