MATERIALISTIC EVOLUTION 3! 



religious convictions, if any, were nowhere indi- 

 cated. Yet even of these latter no small number 

 may well have been believers. Few probably 

 would have hesitated to repeat in their own regard 

 the statement made by Darwin, only three years 

 before his death: "In my most extreme fluctua- 

 tions I have never been an atheist in the sense of 

 denying the existence of God." ' 



Since materialistic evolution is the natural off- 

 spring of nineteenth century infidelity, and was in- 

 deed explicity mobilized and promoted for the 

 rationalistic campaign against the Church by men 

 like Haeckel, it is particularly interesting to note 

 these results taken from the 1910 edition of the 

 Encyclopedia, the very time when materialism 

 still fatuously vaunted that it had displaced 

 Christianity. 



What is even more significant is the fact that of 

 the eleven founders of the various biological 

 divisions, all, with the single exception of Darwin, 

 were positive believers.* Among them Lamarck, 

 the founder of modern evolution, to whose 

 theories the twentieth century schools of evolu- 

 tion largely returned after the rejection of Dar- 

 winism, was a Catholic. So also were Malpighi, 

 the founder of pathology; Schwann, the founder 

 of the cell theory; Pasteur, the founder of bacter- 

 iology; and Johannes Miiller, the eminent founder 



7 "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," I, p. 274. 

 * Menge, op. cit., p. 207. 



