26 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



so far as its application is supported by actual 

 proof." J These are the only restrictions that the 

 Church would place upon science; the bounds of 

 truth and fact. 



Evolution, as every true scientist knows, does 

 not offer certainty, but a measure of probability 

 only, greater or smaller as the case may be, within 

 rather indefinite limits. Science expresses this 

 truth in a single word when it speaks of the 

 "theory" or "theories" of evolution. The more 

 closely plants or animals can be scientifically 

 classed together, the greater the evolutionary 

 probability. The more remote they are from 

 each other, the less is that probability, until it 

 finally vanishes altogether. More than this can- 

 not be claimed with scientific accuracy by any 

 evolutionist. Father Wasmann thus clearly states 

 the entire matter from his own transformist view- 

 point, the viewpoint of an unquestioned authority 

 in evolutionary lore: 



In the case of the species of the same genus, the genera of 

 the same family, and often for the families of the same order 

 even for orders of the same class the probability is in support 

 of evolution, and we meet with actual points of contact proving 

 the relationship between the various forms. But the higher we 

 ascend in the systematic categories, and the more closely we 

 approach the great chief types of the animal world, the scantier 

 becomes the evidence. In fact it fails so completely that we 

 are finally forced to acknowledge, that the assumption of a 

 monophyletic evolution (i.e., from one single parent form) of 

 the whole kingdom of organic life is a delightful dream without 



1 Erich Wasmann, S. J., "The Problem of Evolution," p. 13, 



