DARWINISM AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 115 



beech-tree when cut down will " put forth birch/' because it is 

 " a tree of a smaller kind which needeth less nourishment." * 

 Elsewhere he suggests the experiment of polling a willow to see 

 what it will turn into, he himself having seen one which had a 

 bracken fern growing out of it ! And he takes it as probable, 

 though it is inter magnalia natures, that " whatever creature 

 having life is generated without seed, that creature will change 

 out of one species into another." Bacon looks upon the seed as a 

 restraining power, limiting a variation which, in spontaneous 

 generations, is practically infinite, "for it is the seed, and the 

 nature of it, which locketh and boundeth in the creature that it 

 doth not expatiate." Here the fact of transmutation is taken for 

 granted, generation from putrefaction being sometimes called in 

 as a deus ex machind to explain it. But Bacon certainly had no 

 idea that the existing species of plants and animals represent 

 those originally created by God, and this is what special creation 

 means. 



It might be supposed, however, that the doctrine of " special 

 creation " was the private property of commentators, suggested 

 by the account of creation given in Genesis. And there were, 

 no doubt, those who so interpreted the words " after his kind." 

 But Christianity was in no way committed to this view, while 

 St. Augustine distinctly rejects it in favor of a view which, with- 

 out any violence to language, we may call a theory of evolu- 

 tion. The greatest of the schoolmen deliberately adopted St. 

 Augustine's views and rejected that of special creation. His 

 words are so remarkable that they are worth quoting, especially 

 as we have never seen them referred to in this connection : 



As to the production of plants, Augustine holds a different view. For 

 some expositors say that on this third day (of creation) plants were actually pro- 

 duced each in his kind — a view which is favored by a superficial reading of the 

 letter of Scripture. But Augustine says that the earth is then said to have 

 brought forth grass and trees causaliter — i. e., it then received the power to pro- 

 duce them. This view he confirms by the authority of Scripture, which says, 

 " These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth, when they were 

 created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and 

 every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field 

 before it grew." (Genesis, ii, 4.) Before then they came into being on the 

 earth, they were made causally in the earth. And this is confirmed by reason. 

 For in those first days God made creatures primarily or causaliter^ and then 

 rested from his work, and yet after that, by his superintendence of things 

 created, he works even to this day in the work of propagation. For the pro- 

 duction of plants from the earth belongs to the work of propagation. 



Here, though there is no idea of the method by which the 

 " kinds " were brought forth from the earth, or of their interrela- 

 tions with one another, there is a clear conception of creation by 



* " Natural History," Cent, vi, p. 523. 



