326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



nostrils the breath, of life " ? Was the soul, too, created by evo- 

 lution, or was that at least a " special creation " ? We are here, 

 be it observed, going beyond the range of our subject, which was 

 the relation of Darwinism to the Christian faith, and passing into 

 a region where neither science nor religion has spoken. Dr. Pusey 

 says " theology does not hold transf ormist theories excluded by 

 Holy Scripture, so that they spare the soul of man." But science 

 spares the soul of man, just as it spares original creation, because 

 it can not have any knowledge of either. It can deny both. What 

 is there that man can not deny ? It may even cover its dogmatic 

 denial by a semblance of reason with the help of the major prem- 

 ise : " What science can not know can not be known." From 

 this, no doubt, the conclusion follows with logical necessity. But 

 we answer with negatur maior. With regard, however, to the 

 question of the origin of the soul, as a theological problem, it is 

 perhaps easier to say what is not true than what is. The soul can 

 not be a " special " creation whether in Adam or in his children. 

 There is no " species " of soul. We may call it, if we will, an " in- 

 dividual " creation ; but is not all creation individual creation 

 from the religious point of view ? And if so, it is a phrase which 

 does not help us. 



We can, however, explain the difficulty in precisely the same 

 way in which science explains a law — namely, " by substituting 

 one mystery for another." * We may say that there is no actual 

 or conceivable difficulty in the creation of the soul of Adam which 

 does not recur in the case of every child born into the world. Is 

 its soul inherited, like its bodily organism, or is it added to the 

 body ? The instincts of Christianity, rather than any formal de- 

 cision, have throughout been against traducianism, or the inher- 

 itance of the soul. Creationism, or the infusio aniracR, on the 

 other hand, guards a truth which traducianism loses. But in 

 spite of all the authority which can be claimed for it, it sounds 

 crude and strange, to our ways of thinking. The very word in- 

 fusio, and, in a lesser degree, the barbarous word " insufflation," 

 suggest that the soul is a thing which at a definite though un- 

 known moment is put into the body "like a passenger in a 

 boat," as Aristotle has it. If so, the body before the advent of 

 the soul was not in any real sense human. For " the reasonable 

 soul " is as essential to true humanity as the " flesh." And if the 

 analogy suggested in the Athanasian Creed justifies us in appeal- 

 ing to that greater mystery, on which Christian thought, in de- 

 fense of the faith, has been compelled to speculate and define, wo 

 have to remember that it is heresy to assert that "that Holy 

 Thing," which in the fullness of time was to be born of the Vir- 



* Mill, " Logic," i, p. 527. 



