Unfortunately, however, neither of these writers maintains that
balanced mental poise which one likes to see in the defenders of
Catholic truth. Dorlodot seems too profoundly impressed with the
desirability of occupying a popular position to do impartial justice
to the problem at issue, and his anxiety to keep in step with the
majority blinds him apparently to the flaws of that “Darwinism”
which he praises. Had he been content with a simple demarcation of
negative limits, there would be no ground for complaint. But, when
he goes so far as to bestow unmerited praise upon the author of the
mechanistic “Origin of Species” and the materialistic “Descent of
Man”; when, by confounding Darwinism with evolution, he consents
to that historical injustice which allows Darwin to play Jacob to
Lamarck’s Esau, and which leaves the original genius of Mendel in
obscurity while it accords the limelight of fame to the unoriginal
expounder of a borrowed conception; when, by means of the sophistry of
anachronism, he speciously endeavors to bring the speculations of an
Augustine or an Aquinas into alignment with those of the ex-divinity
student of Cambridge; when he assumes that Fixism is so evidently wrong
that its claims are unworthy of consideration, whereas Transformism
is so evidently right that we can dispense with the formality of
examining its credentials; when, in a word, he expresses himself not
merely in the sense, but in the very stereotyped cant phrases of a
dead philosophy, we realize, with regret, that his conclusions are
based, not on any reasoned analysis of the evidence, but solely upon
the dogmatism of scientific orthodoxy, that his thought is cast in
antiquated molds, and that for him, apparently, the sixty-five years
of discovery and disillusionment, which have intervened since the
publication of the “Origin of Species,” have passed in vain.
But, if Dorlodot represents the extreme of uncritical approval, Mr.
McCann represents the opposite, and no less reprehensible, extreme of
biased antagonism, that is neither fair in method nor conciliatory in
tone. Instead of adhering to the time-honored practice of Catholic
controversialists, which is rather to overstate than to understate the
argument of an adversary, Mr. McCann tends, at times, to minimize, in
his restatement, the force of an opponent’s reasoning. He frequently
belittles with mere flippant sneer, and is only too ready to question
the good faith of those who do not share his convictions. Thus, when
McCann ridicules Wells and accuses him of pure romancing, because the
latter speaks of certain hairy “wild women” of the Caves, he himself
seems to be ignorant of the fact that a palæolithic etching has been
found representing a woman so covered with hair that she had no need of
other apparel (the bas-relief from Laugerie-Basse carved on reindeer
palm—cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 540 and Plate 2).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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