Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
Darwiniana : Essays — Volume 02
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882; Evolution (Biology)
Denique idem sentiunt omnes qui in his operibus veram
successionem et temporalem distinctionem agnoscant."
Secondly, with respect to animals, Suarez is no less decided:--
"_De animalium ratione carentium productione quinto et sexto die
facta_. [Footnote: _Loc. cit_. Lib. II. cap. vii. et viii. 1, 32,
35.]
"32. Primo ergo nobis certum sit hæc animantia non in virtute tantum aut in
semine, sed actu, et in seipsis, facta fuisse his diebus in quibus facta
narrantur. Quanquam Augustinus lib. 3, Gen. ad liter, cap. 5 in sua
persistens sententia contrarium sentire videatur."
But Suarez proceeds to refute Augustin's opinions at great length, and his
final judgment may be gathered from the following passage:--
"35. Tertio dicendum est, hæc animalia omnia his diebus producta esse, IN
PERFECTO STATU, IN SINGULIS INDIVIDUIS, SEU SPECIEBUS SUIS, JUXTA
UNIUSCUJUSQUE NATURAM.... ITAQUE FUERUNT OMNIA CREATA INTEGRA ET OMNIBUS
SUIS MEMBRIS PERFECTA."
As regards the creation of animals and plants, therefore, it is clear that
Suarez, so far from "distinctly asserting derivative creating," denies it
as distinctly and positively as he can; that he is at much pains to refute
St. Augustin's opinions; that he does not hesitate to regard the faint
acquiescence of St. Thomas Aquinas in the views of his brother saint as a
kindly subterfuge on the part of Divus Thomas; and that he affirms his own
view to be that which is supported by the authority of the Fathers of the
Church. So that, when Mr. Mivart tells us that Catholic theology is in
harmony with all that modern science can possibly require; that "to the
general theory of evolution, and to the special Darwinian form of it, no
exception ... need be taken on the ground of orthodoxy;" and that "law and
regularity, not arbitrary intervention, was the Patristic ideal of
creation," we have to choose between his dictum, as a theologian, and that
of a great light of his Church, whom he himself declares to be "widely
venerated as an authority, and whose orthodoxy has never been questioned."
But Mr. Mivart does not hesitate to push his attempt to harmonise science
with Catholic orthodoxy to its utmost limit; and, while assuming that the
soul of man "arises from immediate and direct creation," he supposes that
his body was "formed at first (as now in each separate individual) by
derivative, or secondary creation, through natural laws" (p. 331).
This means, I presume, that an animal, having the corporeal form and bodily
powers of man, may have been developed out of some lower form of life by a
process of evolution; and that, after this anthropoid animal had existed
for a longer or shorter time, God made a soul by direct creation, and put
it into the manlike body, which, heretofore, had been devoid of that
_anima rationalis_, which is supposed to be man's distinctive
character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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