species in the mother-species, this new certainly cannot have its origin
anywhere else than in the supermundane _prima causa_ in the Creator and
Lord of the world.

In the second case also, theism is in no way threatened. For if we have to
refer the cause of a new phenomenon in the world so far back as even to the
beginning and the first elements of all things, we nevertheless have to
arrive at last at the cause of all causes; and this is the living God, the
Creator and Lord of the world. Thus the new form of existence would anyhow
have the cause of its existence in God; and the value, the importance, and
the substance of its existence, would only commence from where it really
made its appearance, and not from where its still latent causes existed. As
little as we attribute to the just fecundated {263} egg of man the value of
man, although we know that under the right conditions the full man is to be
developed out of it, just so little in accordance with that view would the
differences of value within the created world be dissolved in a mass of
atoms or potencies of a similar value. Neither should we have to fear that
from such a theory cold deism would be substituted for our theism, full of
life. For as certainly as theism does not exclude, but includes, all that
is relative truth in deism, so certainly the supposition that the Creator
had laid the latent causes of all following creatures in the first germs of
the created, would also not exclude the idea of a constant and omnipotent
presence of the Creator in the world. Undoubtedly it belongs to our most
elementary conceptions of God, that we have to conceive his lofty position
above time, not as an abstract distance from finite development, but, as an
absolute domination over it; so that for God himself, who creates time and
developments in time, there is no dependence on the temporal succession of
created things, and it is quite the same to him whether he instantly calls
a creature into existence, or whether he prepares it in a short space of
time, or years, or in millions of years. In this idea we also find the only
possible and simple solution of the before-mentioned problem of a timeless
time which Fr. Vischer wishes to propose to philosophy.

Sec. 3. _The Evolution Theory and Theism._

In speaking of an evolution theory, in distinction from the descent theory,
we mean, as is evident from the first part of our work, that way and mode
of {264} constructing the doct