But Suarez proceeds to refute Augustin’s opinions at great length, and his final judgment may be gathered from the following passage:—­

“35.  Tertio dicendum est, haec animalia omnia his diebus producta esse, IN PERFECTO STATU, IN SINGULIS INDIVIDUIS, SEU SPECIEBUS SUIS, JUXTA UNIUSCUJUSQUE NATURAM....  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 accordance with the elementary requirements of the philosophy in which Mr. Mivart delights, have possessed a distinct sensitive and vegetative soul, or souls.  Hence, when the “breath of life” was breathed into the manlike animal’s nostrils, he must have already been a living and feeling creature.  But Suarez particularly discusses this point, and not only rejects Mr. Mivart’s view, but adopts language of very theological strength regarding it.