EVIDENCES OF EVOLUTION. 135 



From what precedes it is evinced, that Evolu- 

 tion as a theory, to claim no more for it, is in the 

 highest degree probable. It is, in fact, the sole natu- 

 ral explanation of the facts discussed ; the sole theory 

 that is in accordance with what Sir William Hamil- 

 ton calls the law of parsimony ; a law which was 

 fully recognized by Fathers and Scholastics when 

 they taught that we should not invoke the action of 

 supernatural causes, when natural agencies are ade- 

 quate to account for the facts and phenomena ob- 

 served. 



Special Creation and Evolution. 



Special creation, as an explanation of the multi- 

 tudinous forms of life with which the earth teems, 

 and has teemed during long aeons past, is but an 

 assumption, and an assumption, too, that has no 

 warrant outside of the individual opinions of certain 

 commentators of Scripture; opinions which, by the 

 very nature of the case, can carry with them no 

 greater weight than would attach to the views of 

 their authors on any other question of natural sci- 

 ence. As to Scripture itself, and the teaching of the 

 Fathers and Doctors of the Church, we shall see in 

 the sequel that their testimony is as strongly in favor 

 of derivative creation, Evolution under the Provi- 

 dential guidance of natural causes, as it possibly can 

 be in favor of the old and now almost universally 

 discarded theory of special creations. 1 



14 En paleontologie,'' declared the Abbe Guillemet before 

 the International Catholic Scientific Congress at Brussels last 

 year, " les inductions evolutionistes expliquent sans peine par la 

 descendance d'anctres communs ces encliaincments si bien mis 



