CATHOLICS AND EVOLUTION 99 



Genesis literally, 7 and says: "Although the creation is presented 

 to us as though it took place in regular (i.e., separate) sequence, 

 yet it really took place at once." 8 On this St. Thomas remarks: 

 "And so Moses, since he was instructing an uneducated people 

 about the work of Creation, divided up into parts what really 

 took place at once." 9 



Father Bernard J. Otten, in his learned worE 

 on the history of dogmas, writes of what these au- 

 thors describe as the Augustine theory of evo- 

 lution that: "Although the rationes seminales 

 were implanted in matter at the beginning of 

 time, nevertheless the actual production of finally 

 complete beings is according to him [St. Augus- 

 tine] the work of God, and not of matter 

 alone." 10 It is thus at all events distinct from 

 all forms of materialistic evolution. In illustra- 

 tion the following quotation is offered from the 

 writings of the Saint: 



The earth is then said to produce the herb and the tree 

 causally i.e., it received the power to produce them. For in 

 it were now made, as in the roots of time, those things which 

 were afterwards to be produced in the course of time. God 

 afterwards planted Paradise, and brought forth of this earth 

 all manner of trees fair to behold and pleasant to eat of. But 

 we must not suppose that He added any new species (creatura) 

 which He had not previously made, and which was needed to 

 complete the perfection of which it is said that they were good. 

 No, for all the species of plants and trees had been produced in 

 the first creation (conditione] , from which God rested, thence- 

 forth moving and administering, as time went on, those same 

 things. 



7 De Gen. Contra Manich., n, 2. 



*De Gen. ad Lit., VI, n, 12. 



* Examiner, March 6, 1920, p. 93. 



10 "A Manual of the History of Dogmas," I, pp. 291, 39- 



