CATHOLICS AND EVOLUTION IOI 



It will suffice finally to quote upon our subject 

 the statement of a foremost Catholic lay expo- 

 nent in the scientific field whose labors have been 

 of notable service to both science and Faith, and 

 who in his own person shows the perfect harmony 

 that exists between them. "To me, at least, it 

 seems," Sir Bertram Windle says, "as if the lan- 

 guage of Peter Lombard and of St. Thomas 

 Aquinas in commenting on St. Augustine, makes 

 it clear that the teaching of the greatest and most 

 influential Doctor in the history of the Church 

 is quite consonant with any reasonable theory of 

 evolution nay, it is broad and comprehensive 

 enough to provide not only for whatever limited 

 degree of evolution is yet fairly established, but 

 even for anything that has even a remote prob- 

 ability of being proven in the future. Nor am I 

 deterred from coming to that conclusion by the 

 very obvious criticism that the Saint did not state 

 the doctrine with the clearness with which it is 

 now laid down, a thing which no reasonable being 

 would expect him to have done." 12 



More need not be said. Catholic evolutionists, 

 in brief, hold as probable the theory that the or- 

 ganic world has assumed its present form, "not 

 in consequence of God's constant interference 

 with the natural order, but as a result of the ac- 

 tion of those laws which He Himself has im- 



13 "A Century of Scientific Thought," p. 8. 



