EVOLUTION AND THE BIBLE 



not always triumphant or even constant, but was thwarted by 

 setbacks and descents toward the borders of animahty, with 

 biological slips and anatomical relapses. If such were the case, 

 animal traits observed in fossil men might be the results of 

 recessive mutations. 



Another fact we must not overlook is that we know but a 

 feeble part of existing fossils. The crust of the earth still hides 

 many a secret. Present hypotheses skip over vast spaces 

 empty of data. Readjustments called for by new discoveries 

 are inevitable, and will surely advance our knowledge of 

 earliest mankind. 



These are only hints and hypotheses. At least they afford 

 us a glimpse of a possibility of harmonizing Catholic faith 

 with the sciences of prehistory. The believer can well accord 

 to science that Adam, ancestor of the race homo sapiens, may 

 have been morphologically and culturally a primitive — but 

 a primitive to whom God communicated knowledge adequate 

 for his condition in life and capable of being directed toward 

 his supernatural end. Adam's preternatural gifts can readily 

 be reconciled with the data of prehistory and ethnology. The 

 evolutionist perspective does not seem to involve any essential 

 change in the doctrine of man's original state. 



E. Monogenism or Polygenism 



Contemporary anthropology is predominantly in favor of 

 monophyletism, understanding by this word the connection of 

 all mankind with one and the same original line or stock. By 

 their morphological, physiological, and psychical traits, all men 

 exhibit themselves as members of a single great family that 

 has had a wide history and has divided and subdivided 

 repeatedly. The term "monogenism" is often employed by 

 scientists to express such unity of stock, although the question 

 whether this stock was made up of one or many original 

 couples is left undetermined. 



However, if anthropologists can trace the various ethnic 

 groups to a single primitive stock, paleontology and biology 

 cannot furnish data either to favor or to oppose a strict 

 monogenism, in the sense of a single pair standing at the head 

 of the human species. Man, who entered the world without 

 noise, afterward walked so quietly that whenever science can 



114 



