From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



Doubtless human judgment is still very weak, but 

 to deny it the right to pronounce judgment on the 

 painful conditions of earthly life is to disparage it unduly. 

 That judgment has been given as follows. 



Evolution cannot be the work of a supremely wise, 

 just, good, and powerful divinity, whether that divinity 

 had laid down its smallest details in advance, or would 

 intervene from time to time to correct errors. 



Endeavours have, however, been made to reconcile 

 the idea of Providence with the facts. It has been said 

 that gropings and errors might be comprehensible after 

 the following manner: Providence, in creating the 

 primitive universe, with a progressive impulse and all 

 potentialities contained within it, would have set bounds 

 to Itself. The impulse once given would proceed auto- 

 matically, and its objectifications would develop freely, 

 outside any pre-established plan, and without intervention 

 on the part of Providence. 



This is more or less what is expressed by the Rev. 

 F. Zahn in his book, Evolution and Dogma, 



* For the old school of natural theology God 

 is the direct cause of all that exists. For the evolu- 

 tionist He is the cause of causes causa causarum 

 of the world and all that it contains. The old 

 theories were that God created everything directly 

 in the state in which it at present exists. According 

 to Evolution, creation, or rather the development of 

 living creatures, has been a slow and gradual process 

 needing vast periods of time to transform the chaos 

 into a cosmos, and to give to the visible universe 

 the beauty and the harmony which it now shows. 

 . . . This is the true meaning of Evolution ; and so 

 understood, Evolution, to borrow Temple's expres- 

 sion, 1 " teaches us that the execution of the Divine 

 plan derives more from the primordial act of 



1 Temple : Relations between Religion and Science. 



