It would be useless to go through the innumerable fallacies and untruths of these modern Jesuits in detail, and point out the rational and scientific reply. The vast power of this most dangerous religious congregation consists precisely in its device of accepting one part of science in order to destroy the other part more effectively with it. Their masterly act of sophistry, their equivocal "probabilism," their mendacious "reservatio mentalis," the principle that the higher aim sanctifies the worst means, the pernicious casuistry of Liguori and Gury, the cynicism with which they turn the holiest principles to the gratification of their ambition, have impressed on the Jesuits that black character that Carl Hoensbroech has so well exposed recently. The great dangers that menace real science, owing to this smuggling into it of the Jesuitical spirit, must not be undervalued. They have been well pointed out by Francé, Escherich, and others. They are all the greater in Germany at the present time, as the Government and the Reichstag are working together to prepare the way for the Jesuits, and to yield a most pernicious influence on the school to these deadly enemies of the free spirit of the country. However, we will hope that this clerical reaction represents only a passing episode in modern history. We trust that one permanent result of it will be the recognition, in principle, even by the Jesuits, of the great idea of evolution. We may then rest assured that its most important consequence, the descent of man from other primate forms, will press on victoriously, and soon be recognised as a beneficent and helpful truth. CHAPTER III THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE SOUL THE IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY AND GOD EXPLANATION OF PLATE III EMBRYOS OF THREE MAMMALS AT THREE CORRESPONDING STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT The embryos of man (M), the anthropoid ape (gibbon, G), and the bat (rhinolophus, B) can hardly be distinguished in the earlier stage (the upper row), although the five cerebral vesicles, the gill-clefts, and the three higher sense-organs are already visible. On the curved dorsal surface we see the sections of the primitive vertebræ. Even later, when the two pairs of limbs have appeared in the form of roundish fins (the middle row), the differences are not great. It is not until a further development of the limbs and head has taken place (lowest row) that the characteristic forms are clearly seen. It is particularly notable that the primitive brain, the organ of the mind, with its five cerebral vesicles, is the same in all. PLATE III. [Illustration: EMBRYOS OF THREE MAMMALS (_At three corresponding stages of development_). B = BAT (Rhinolophus) G = GIBBON (Hylobates) M = MAN (Homo)] CHAPTER III THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE SOUL THE IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY AND GOD