138 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



told me that on account of these difficulties and gaps the most 

 profound of his professors, while adhering faithfully to the 

 evolution theory as a theory, acknowledged that as soon as one 

 begins to examine the process in detail, the difficulties are simplf 

 unsurpassable, and the transitions become in some points even 

 unthinkable. Hence we are far from having reached the point 

 where the evolution-theory is even promising to pass from the 

 region of the hypothesis into the region of ascertained fact. 



To the Scripture scholar, we need not repeat, it 

 is a matter of indifference whether the successive 

 species hitherto described in the Sacred Text were 

 created directly, or through the even more won- 

 derful medium of evolution, according to laws 

 divinely foreordained and imprinted on the or- 

 iginally created elements. Certain restrictions, 

 as we have seen, are to be made, which science 

 and reason postulate, nor do we wish here to 

 anticipate what is still to be said of the specific 

 creation of the first human beings. The old 

 theory of a gradual transformation of species, we 

 have also shown, was widely discarded by scien- 

 tists at the beginning of the twentieth century in 

 favor of the "saltatory theory," popularized by 

 De Vries, which calls for the sudden and not for 

 the gradual appearance of the new species. It 

 was thus a complete reversal of the position of 

 the older evolutionists, once considered unassail- 

 able. For the present it suffices to have pointed 

 out what agreement there exists between the facts 

 of science and the actual sequence of creative act? 

 in the order in which we find them recorded in the 



