It would thus appear, that not all the organic types of either the plant, or the animal, kingdom are of equal antiquity, and that the belated rise of unprecedented forms has the status of an approximate certainty, wherewith every theory of origins must inevitably reckon. How, then, is the fixist to reconcile this successive appearance of organisms with the simultaneous “creation” advocated by St. Augustine and St. Thomas of Aquin? Unless there be some other gradual process besides transmutation, to bridge the interval between the creative fiat and the eventual appearance of modern types, there seems to be no escape from the dilemma. This brings us to St. Augustine’s theory of the evolution of organic life from inorganic matter, which Dorlodot sophistically construes as supporting the theory of descent. According to St. Augustine, for whose view the Angelic Doctor expressed a deliberate preference, the creation of the corporeal world was the result of a single creative act, having an immediate effect in the case of minerals, and a remote or postponed effect in the case of plants and animals (cf. “De Genesi ad litteram,” lib. V, c. 5). Living beings, therefore, were created, not in actuality, but in germ. God imparted to the elements the power of producing the various plants and animals in their proper time and place. Hence living beings were created causally rather than formally, by the establishment of causal mechanisms or natural agencies especially ordained to bring about the initial formation of the ancestral forms of life. The Divine act initiating these “natural processes” (_rationes seminales, rationes causales_) in inorganic, and not in living, matter, was instantaneous, but the processes, which terminated in the formation of plants and animals, in their appointed time and place, were in themselves gradual and successive. Thus by an influx of Divine power the earth was made pregnant with the promise of every form of life—“_Sicut matres gravidae sunt foetibus, sic ipse mundus est gravidus causis nascentium._” (Augustine, lib. III, “de Trinitate,” c. 9.)