4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



very childish. . . . God neither formed man with bodily hands 

 nor did He breathe upon him with throat and lips." 



Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or 

 evolution theory, adding that " certain very small animals may 

 not have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have 

 originated later from putrefying matter," and argues that, even 

 if this be so, God is still their creator. 



He dwells upon such a potential creation as involved in the 

 actual creation, and speaks of animals " whose numbers the after- 

 time unfolded." 



In his great treatise on the Trinity the work to which he de- 

 voted the best thirty years of his life we find the full growth of 

 this opinion. He develops at length the view that in the creation 

 of living beings there was something like a growth that God is 

 the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes, and 

 finally argues that certain substances are endowed by God with 

 the power of producing certain classes of plants and animals.* 



This idea of a development apart from the original creation 

 and by secondary causes was helped in its growth by a theological 

 exigency. More and more as the organic world was observed, 

 no matter how imperfectly, the vast multitude of petty animals, 

 winged creatures, and " creeping things " was instinctively felt to 

 be a strain upon the sacred narrative. More and more it became 

 difficult to reconcile the dignity of the Almighty with his work 

 in bringing each of these creatures before Adam to be named ; or 

 to reconcile the human limitations of Adam with his work in 



* For the Chaldsean view of creation, see George Smith, Chaldasan Account of Genesis, 

 New York, 1876, pp. 14, 15, and 64-86 ; also Lukas, as above ; also Sayce, Religion of the 

 Ancient Babylonians, Hibbert Lectures for 1887, pp. 371 and elsewhere; as to the fall of 

 man, Tower of Babel, sacredness of the number seven, etc., see also Delitzsch, appendix to 

 the German translation of Smith, pp. 305 et seq. ; as to the almost exact adoption of the 

 Chaldsean legends into the Hebrew sacred account, see all these, as also Schrader, Die Keil- 

 inschriften und das Alte Testament, Giessen, 1883, early chapters; also article Babylonia 

 in the Encyclopaedia Britannica ; as to the similar approval of creation by the Creator in 

 both accounts, see George Smith, p. 73 ; as to the migration of the Babylonian legends to 

 the Hebrews, see Schrader, Whitehouse's translation, pp. 44, 45 ; as to the Chaldasan belief 

 in a solid firmament, while Schrader in 1883 thought it not proved, Jensen in 1890 has found 

 it clearly expressed see his Kosmologie der Babylonier, pp. 9 et seq., also pp. 304-306, and 

 elsewhere. Dr. Lukas in 1893 also fully accepts this view of a Chaldaean record of a "firma- 

 ment " ; see Kosmologie, pp. 43, etc. 



For the seven-day week among Chaldaians and rest on the seventh day, and the proof 

 that even the name " Sabbath " is of Chaldaean origin, see Delitzsch, Beigaben zu Smith's 

 Chald. Genesis, pp. 300 and 306 ; also Schrader ; for St. Basil, see Hexaemeron and Homi- 

 lies vii-ix ; but, for the steadfastness of Basil's view in regard to the immutability of spe- 

 cies, see a Catholic writer on Evolution and Faith in the Dublin Review for July, 1871, p. 13 ; 

 for citations of St. Augustine on Genesis, see the De Genesi, lib. ii, cap. 14, in Migne, 

 xxxiv, 188 ; lib. v, cap. 5 and cap. 23 ; and lib. vii, cap. 1 ; for the citations from his work 

 on the Trinity, see his De Trinitate, lib. iii, cap. 8 and 9, in Migne, xlii, 877, 878. 



