142 MR. DARWIN S CRITICS v 



authority, and whose orthodoxy has never been 

 questioned.&quot; 



But Mr. Mivart does not hesitate to push his 

 attempt to harmonise science with Catholic 

 orthodoxy to its utmost limit ; and, while 

 assuming that the soul of man &quot;arises from 

 immediate and direct creation,&quot; he supposes that 

 his body was &quot; formed at first (as now in each 

 separate individual) by derivative, or secondary 

 creation, through natural laws &quot; (p. 331). 



This means, I presume, that an animal, having 

 the corporeal form and bodily powers of man, may 

 have been developed out of some lower form of 

 life by a process of evolution ; and that, after this 

 anthropoid animal had existed for a longer or 

 shorter time, God made a soul by direct creation, 

 and put it into the manlike body, which, hereto 

 fore, had been devoid of that anima rationalis, 

 which is supposed to be man s distinctive 

 character. 



This hypothesis is incapable of either proof or 

 disproof, and therefore may be true ; but if 

 Suarez is any authority, it is not Catholic 

 doctrine. &quot; Nulla est in homine forma educta de 

 potentia materia?,&quot; 1 is a dictum which is absolutely 

 inconsistent with the doctrine of the natural 

 evolution of any vital manifestation of the human 

 body. 



Moreover, if man existed as an animal before 

 1 Disput. xv. x. No. 27. 



