74 Evohttion and its Conseqiiences. 



meaning, tliis truth will be brought out yet more clearly than 

 before. 



Far from maintaining that Suarez was a teacher of 

 development or evolution, what I quoted him for was this : — 



I. As an opponent of the theory of a perpetual, direct 

 creation of organisms (which many held, and still hold). 



II. To show that the principles of scholastic theology are 

 such as not to exclude the theory of development, but, on the 

 contrary, to favour it, even before it was known or broached. 



What Professor Huxley quotes in his article amply 

 confirms my position. For if there are innumerable substan- 

 tial forms in the potentia of matter, which are evolved 

 according to the proximate capacity of matter to receive such 

 forms, it is evident that if the organisation of matter, through 

 chemical or other causes, progresses by the ever-increasingly 

 complex re-actions between bodies and their environment, 

 then it necessarily follows that new and higher substantial 

 forms may be evolved, and consequently new and higher 

 forms of life. 



Such a principle, firmly established against opponents, 

 becomes applicable to the evolution of new species, as soon as 

 ever physical science shows good reason to regard the origin 

 of species not as simultaneous but successive. 



It may be objected that Suarez, in the passage referred to, 

 only adverts to new individuals of known kinds in the 

 ordinary course of nature. Professor Huxley says : ' How the 

 substantial forms of animals and plants primarily originated, 

 is a question to which, so far as I am able to discover, he docs 

 not so much as allude in his Metaphysical Dispvytations.' 

 Most certainly, in his day, no one entertained the modern 

 notion as to origin of species; and it was hardly to be 

 expected that Suarez should say anything directly in point. 

 That he should estabhsh the needful principle was all we 

 could reasonably demand or expect. 



