The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and ScienceVarious
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 17, April, 1873 to September, 1873: A Monthly Magazine of General Literature and Science
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
He replied to Mr. Mivart, and in his reply does neither more nor less
than constitute himself the infallible teacher of all mankind, the
supreme pontiff of science, empowered to speak with authority on all
matters pertaining to religion and philosophy, as well as to anatomy.
He has the commendable modesty, even, to tell Catholics what they
may believe, and what they must reject. He interprets the Bible for
them, expounds the teachings of the Fathers of the church, comments
on the schoolmen, all for their benefit; in fact, entirely forgets
the good old maxim, “Let the cobbler stick to his last,” and imagines
that, because he has learned a considerable amount about brains and
stomachs—dead brains and stomachs, for the most part—he can legislate
for the Christian world; that anything in heaven or on earth which
he cannot weigh or measure, upon which he cannot bring the knife, or
the blowpipe, or the spectroscope to bear, does not exist, or exist
otherwise than as it takes form in his own by no means humble mind.
In his reply to Mr. Mivart, he virtually passes over all of the latter
gentleman’s scientific objections, and fastens on his assertion that
evolution is at all _compatible_ with Catholic doctrine.
Mr. Mivart had, as we have seen, referred to Suarez, and that, Mr.
Mivart assures us, because, in Mr. Huxley’s words, “the popular repute
of that learned theologian and subtle casuist was not such as to make
his works a likely place of refuge for liberality of thought.”
Of course Mr. Mivart did not intend to represent Suarez or the other
writers we have mentioned above as advocating the very modern doctrine
of evolution, but only abstract principles harmonizing with it; and,
if anything, broader than it, inasmuch as they are broad enough not
only to take in the recent theory of evolution, but any other theory
of development which may be yet advocated; yet Mr. Huxley assumed
that Mr. Mivart meant to convey the impression that F. Suarez was a
Darwinian or a disciple of Herbert Spencer, which he could not well be,
having lived some centuries too early to enjoy any such good-fortune.
Having erected this theory, Mr. Huxley went, in his “More Criticisms on
Darwin,” deliberately to work to demolish it, in doing which he left
his way considerably, raising questions on which Mr. Mivart had said
nothing whatever, and which in the discussion are wholly irrelevant;
as, for instance, the meaning of the word “day” in the first chapter of
Genesis, as advocated by some authorities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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