v MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS 139 



made to agree with a belief in the evolution of 

 living beings only by the supposition that the 

 plants and animals, which are said to have been 

 created on the third, fifth, and sixth days, were 

 merely the primordial forms, or rudiments, out of 

 which existing plants and animals have been 

 evolved; so that, on these days, plants and 

 animals were not created actually, but only 

 potentially. 



The latter view is that held by Mr. Mivart, who 

 follows St. Augustin, and implies that he has the 

 sanction of Suarez. But, in point of fact, the 

 latter great light of orthodoxy takes no small 

 pains to give the most explicit and direct contra- 

 diction to all such imaginations, as the following 

 passages prove. In the first place, as regards 

 plants, Suarez discusses the problem : 



" Quomodo herba virens et ccetera vegetabilia hoc [tertio] die 

 fuerint producta. 1 



" Praecipua enim difficultas hie est, quam attingit Div. Thomas 

 1, par. qu. 69, art. 2, an haec productio plantarum hoc die facta 

 intelligenda sit de productione ipsarum in proprio esse actuali et 

 formali (ut sic rem explicerem) vel de productione tantum in 

 semine et in potentia. Nam Divus Augustinus libro quinto Genes, 

 ad liter, cap. 4 et 5 et libro 8, cap. 3, posteriorein partem tradit, 

 dicens, terrain in hoc die accepisse virtutem germinandi omnia 

 vegetabilia quasi concepto omnium illorum semine, non tamen 

 statim vegetabilia omnia produxisse. Quod primo suadet verbis 

 illis capitis secundi. In die quo fecit Deus ccehtm et terram et 



1 Loc. cit. Lib. II. cap. vii. et viii. 1, 32, 35. 



