IOO EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



which He had formed. Not only did He then plant Paradise, 

 but even now all things that are produced. For who else 

 creates them now, but He who worketh until now? For He 

 creates them now from things that already exist; then, when 

 they had no existence whatever, and when that day (the first) 

 was made.&quot; 



It is very interesting to note in this connection 

 how the Batesonian theory, described as Men- 

 delism to the nth power, recalls the Augustinian 

 view, surprised as its author may be to hear this 

 mentioned. Every new evolution, according to 

 him, was contained in the original organism. Vari 

 ations are merely the result of removing some 

 thing that prevented certain hidden characteris 

 tics from freely manifesting themselves. A re 

 viewer of Professor Adami s &quot;The Lecture on 

 Life,&quot; a medical contribution to the study of evo 

 lution, thus writes of Bateson s thesis in the Dub 

 lin Review: 



The theory logically necessitates the incredible view that the 

 original microscopic sphere of protoplasm, which evolutionists 

 postulate as the beginning of life, must have contained all the 

 properties of all living things and therefore, must have been 

 the most remarkably endowed organism ever existing. He says 

 that &quot;the potentiality was there, not the determinants.&quot; The 

 last word being used, of course, in the Weismannian sense. 

 We agree with him but would like to remind him that the 

 sentence is almost a literal translation of St. Augustine s 

 &quot;nihilominus potentialiter, quorum numeros tempus posted 

 visibiliter explicaret.&quot; A short reflection may prevent the 

 author from further jibes at medieval schoolmen. 



11 De Gen. ad Lit., V, 4. Italics by the present writet. 



