250 THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



important speaker extensively and intensively on 

 the opposite side. 



4 Professor Plate s polemic, writes Dr. Senff, 

 has its weak points. It is unfair to say that Father 

 Wasmann rejects the theory of descent in reference 

 to man because of his ecclesiastical prejudices. 

 Scientists who are not Jesuits are daily coming to 

 the same opinion ; and excellent reasons for this 

 rejection, and perhaps the best of all, are derived 

 from quite another source. Any one who is free 

 from prejudice is bound to acknowledge that 

 Father Wasmann has a right to put forward his 

 arguments against the theory of evolution. He 

 has given sound arguments in abundance, which 

 have nothing at all to do with Roman orthodoxy, 

 since they are defended even by Protestant scholars. 

 What is fan* to one, should be accepted by the other. 

 In my opinion Plate made an unwarrantable assertion 

 when he said that, in the case of Wasmann, the 

 scientist was always subordinate to the theologian 

 in his arguments. Professor Plate seems to me 

 to have assumed the existence in Father Wasmann 

 of a strife between science and theology, in 

 order the more easily to attack him. It cannot 

 be denied that the Theory of Evolution, when 

 extended to man, leads in the case of a Jesuit 

 to a serious conflict with the Church, but if Wasmann 

 claims to be judged as a scientist and not as a Jesuit, 

 scientific etiquette requires us to comply with his 

 desire, as long as he really adheres to science and 



