We have not space, if we had the ability, to go into a lengthy examination of this question. Nor is there any reason that we should. It has already received the attention of able Catholic writers, and we can do no better than give the results of their investigation. They have shown[48] that, with respect to all organisms lower than man, the doctrine of the fathers is that Catholic faith “does not prevent any one from holding the opinion that life, both vegetable and animal, was in the world in germ at its creation, and afterwards developed by regular process into all the various species now on the earth”; therefore, that “all living things up to man exclusively were evolved by natural law out of minute life-germs primarily created, or even out of inorganic matter,” is an opinion which a Catholic may consistently hold if he thinks fit so to do. As to the question of the _body_ of man, the same writers have shown, and we take it to be the safer opinion—in which, perhaps, we differ from Mr. Mivart—“that to question the immediate and instantaneous (or quasi-instantaneous) formation by God of the bodies of Adam and Eve—the former out of inorganic matter, the latter out of the rib of Adam—is at least rash, and probably proximate to heresy.” That the human soul was specially and separately created is an article of Catholic faith. There is not a fact in science at variance with these views of the origin of the body of man and of the human soul. Even Mr. Wallace—to whom the credit of pointing out the influence of “natural selection” in modifying organic beings belongs by right of a title not less valid than that of Mr. Darwin—believes, and he has reason to believe, in the action of an overruling Intelligence in the production of “the human form divine”; and that, in view of man’s special attributes, “he is, indeed, a being apart”—not, therefore, evolved, either as to his body or his soul, from any inferior organism. When a man like Mr. Wallace holds such a view, we may rest assured that the facts in the case do not require any one to hold the contrary. Let us now endeavor to sum up the results in relation to the Darwinian theory and the bearings thus far obtained: 1. The tendency of every kind of animal and plant to increase in geometrical progression, and to transmit a general likeness with individual differences, as well as to present minute variations of any kind in any direction, the great length of past time, the struggle of animals and plants for existence, and the preservation and intensification of favorable variations, are facts on which the theory is based. We accept these facts. 2. We do not accept the theory, because, although it throws light on some facts, there are others with which it is not compatible; and because those even on which it does throw light do not require us to accept it.