In the previous chapter I tried to give you a general idea of the present state of the controversy in regard to evolution. Comparing the various branches of thought we found that the older mythological ideas of the creation of the world were driven long ago out of the province of inorganic science, but that they did not yield to the rational conception of natural development until a much later date in the field of organic nature. Here the idea of evolution did not prove completely victorious until the beginning of the twentieth century, when its most zealous and dangerous opponent, the Church, was forced to admit it. Hence the open acknowledgment of the Jesuit, Father Wasmann, deserves careful attention, and we may look forward to a further development. If his force of conviction and his moral courage are strong enough, he will go on to draw the normal conclusions from his high scientific attainments and leave the Catholic Church, as the prominent Jesuits, Count Hoensbroech and the able geologist, Professor Renard of Ghent, one of the workers on the deep-sea deposits in the _Challenger_ expedition, have lately done. But even if this does not happen, his recognition of Darwinism, in the name of Christian belief, will remain a landmark in the history of evolution. His ingenious and very Jesuitical attempt to bring together the opposite poles will have no very mischievous effect; it will rather tend to hasten the victory of the scientific conception of evolution over the mystic beliefs of the Churches. You will see this more clearly if we go on to consider the important special problem of the "descent of man from the ape," and its irreconcilability with the conventional belief that God made man according to His own image. That this ape or pithecoid theory is an irresistible deduction from the general principle of evolution was clearly recognised forty-five years ago, when Darwin's work appeared, by the shrewd and vigilant theologians; it was precisely in this fact that they found their strongest motive for vigorous resistance. It is quite clear. _Either_ man was brought into existence, like the other animals, by a special creative act, as Moses and Linné taught (an "embodied idea of the Creator," as the famous Agassiz put it so late as 1858); _or_ he has been developed naturally from a series of mammal ancestors, as is claimed by the systems of Lamarck and Darwin.