ITAQUE FUERUNT
OMNIA CREATA INTEGRA ET OMNIBUS SUIS MEMBRIS PERFECTA."

As regards the creation of animals and plants, therefore, it is clear
that Suarez, so far from "distinctly asserting derivative creation,"
denies it as distinctly and positively as he can; that he is at much
pains to refute St. Augustin's opinions; that he does not hesitate to
regard the faint acquiescence of St. Thomas Aquinas in the views of
his brother saint as a kindly subterfuge on the part of Divus Thomas;
and that he affirms his own view to be that which is supported by the
authority of the Fathers of the Church. So that, when Mr. Mivart tells
us that Catholic theology is in harmony with all that modern science
can possibly require; that "to the general theory of evolution, and
to the special Darwinian form of it, no exception ... need be taken on
the ground of orthodoxy;" and that "law and regularity, not arbitrary
intervention, was the Patristic ideal of creation," we have to choose
between his dictum, as a theologian, and that of a great light of
his Church, whom he himself declares to be "widely venerated as an
authority, and whose orthodoxy has never been questioned."

But Mr. Mivart does not hesitate to push his attempt to harmonize
science with Catholic orthodoxy to its utmost limit; and, while
assuming that the soul of man "arises from immediate and direct
creation," he supposes that his body was "formed at first (as now
in each separate individual) by derivative, or secondary creation,
through natural laws" (p. 331).

This means, I presume, that an animal, having the corporeal form and
bodily powers of man, may have been developed out of some lower form
of life by a process of evolution; and that, after this anthropoid
animal had existed for a longer or shorter time, God made a soul by
direct creation, and put it into the manlike body, which, heretofore,
had been devoid of that _anima rationalis_, which is supposed to be
man's distinctive character.

This hypothesis is incapable of either proof or disproof, and
therefore may be true; but if Suarez is any authority, it is not
Catholic doctrine. "Nulla est in homine forma educta de potentia
materiae,"[1] is a dictum which is absolutely inconsistent with the
doctrine of the natural evolution of any vital manifestation of the
human body.

[Footnote 1: Disput. xv. Sec. x. No. 27.]

Moreover, if man existed as an animal before he was provided with a
rational soul, he must, in a