222 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



first ancestor. We should be obliged to revise the 

 interpretation that has usually been given to the 

 words of Scripture which refer to the formation of 

 Adam's body, and read these words in the sense 

 which Evolution demands, a sense which, as we 

 have seen, may be attributed to the words of the 

 inspired record, without either distorting the mean- 

 ing of terms, or in any way doing violence to the 

 text " (Evolution and Dogma. By the Reverend J. 

 A. Zahm, Ph. D., C. S. C, pp. 364, 365). 



Upon this suggested revision of writings which 

 are claimed as forming part of a divine revelation, 

 one of the highest authorities, Francisco Suarez, thus 

 refers, in his Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum, to the 

 elastic interpretation given in his time to the " days " 

 in the first chapter of Genesis. " It is not probable 

 that God, in inspiring Moses to write a history of 

 the Creation, which was to be believed by ordinary 

 people, would have made him use language the true 

 meaning of which it was hard to discover, and still 

 harder to believe." Three centuries have passed 

 since these wise words were penned, and the reproof 

 which they convey is as much needed now as then. 



In near connection with the question of man's 

 origin is that of his antiquity. The existence of his 

 remains, rare as they are everywhere, in deposits 

 older than the Pleistocene or Quaternary Epoch is 

 not proven. This applies to the remarkable frag- 

 ments found by Dr. Dubois in Java, the character of 

 which, in the judgment of several palaeontologists, 



