( Ixxxv ) 



modern science ' as he is called, though he was only a school- 

 man touched with empiricism, believed not only that one 

 species might pass into another, but that it was a matter of 

 chance what the transmutation would be. Sometimes the 

 mediaeval notion of vivification from putrefaction is appealed 

 to, as where he explains the reason why oak boughs put into 

 the earth send forth wild vines, ' which, if it be true (no 

 doubt),' he says,* 'it is not the oak that turneth into a vine, 

 but the oak bough, putrefying, qualifieth the earth to put 

 forth a vine of itself.' Sometimes he suggests a reason which 

 implies a kind of law, as when he thinks that the stump of a 

 beech tree when cut down will ' put forth birch,' because it 

 is a ' tree of a smaller kind which needeth less nourishment.' t 

 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 ! J And he takes it as 

 probable, though it is inter magnalia nature, 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 resti-aining 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.'" And the author 

 also shows that much earlier than the date at which Bacon 

 wrote, theologians were by no means unanimous in accepting 

 " special creation " ; that St. Augustine even distinctly rejected 

 it, and propounded an idea which was evidently considered 

 tenable by the greatest of the schoolmen, St. Thomas Aquinas. 

 St. Thomas' words, quoted by Mr. Aubrey Moore, are as 

 follows : — " As to the production of plants, Augustine holds 

 a different view. Foi- some expositors say that, on this third 

 day (of creation), plants were actually produced each in his 

 kind — a view which is favoured by a superficial reading of 

 the letter of Scripture. But Augustine says tliat the earth 

 is then said to have brought forth grass and trees causal'der — • 

 i. e. it then received the power to produce them." § 



* "Nat. Hist." Cent, vi, 522, fol. ed. 



t I. c. p. 523. t I. c. p. 112. 



§ St. Thomas Af^uiuas, " Summa Theol. " Prima Pars. Quaest., Ixix, 

 Art. 2. 



