CHAP. XIV.] A POSTSCRIPT. 4,33 



such a conception would be to represent them as nothing less 

 than inspired. For certainly no notion of the kind could 

 have been present, even in a dream, to the minds of such 

 thinkers. In their eyes (as in the eyes of most till within 

 the last century) scientific facts must have seemed to tell in 

 the opposite direction. 



All I maintained, and all that I thought any one could have 

 supposed me to maintain, was that these writers , 



_ . . . , An explana- 



asserted abstract principles such as can perfectly tlon - 

 harmonize with the requirements of modern science, and have, 

 as it were, provided for the reception of its most advanced 

 speculations. 



My words were: &quot;The possibility of such phenomena, 

 though ly no means actually foreseen, has yet been fully 

 provided for in the old philosophy centuries before Darwin.&quot; 

 And that this is the case can be proved to demonstration. 

 The really important matter, however, is not what were my 

 expressions, but what is the fact as to the compatibility of 

 evolution with the strictest orthodoxy ? We shall see how, 

 by Professor Huxley s very fortunate misapprehension of my 

 meaning, this truth will be brought out 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 sub 

 stantial 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 organization of matter, 

 through chemical or other causes, progresses by the ever- 



2 P 



