THEISM AND E VOL UTION. 281 



Not only the diverse forms of inorganic matter, rocks, 

 minerals, crystals, were created by the operation of 

 secondary causes, but plants and animals were also 

 the products of such causes. For God, the saint in. 

 sists, created the manifold forms of terrestrial life, 

 not directly but in germ ; potentially and causally 

 potentialiter atque causaliter. In commenting on 

 the words of Genesis: " Let the earth bring forth the 

 green herb," he declares that plants were created 

 not directly and immediately, but causally and po- 

 tentially, in fieri, in causa; that the earth received 

 from God the power of producing herb and tree, 

 producendi accepisse virtutem. 



In his great work on the Trinity, the illustrious 

 Doctor tells us that : " The hidden seeds of all things 

 that are born corporeally and visibly, are concealed 

 in the corporeal elements of the world." We are un- 

 able to see them with our eyes, " but we can con- 

 jecture their existence from our reason." They are 

 quite different from " those seeds that are visible at 

 once to our eyes, from fruits and living things." It 

 is indeed from such hidden and invisible seeds that 

 "The waters, at the bidding of the Creator, produced 

 the first swimming creatures and fowl, and that the 

 earth brought forth the first buds after their kind, 

 and the first living creatures after their kind." They 

 lay dormant, as it were, until long aeons after the 

 creation of matter, because " suitable combinations of 

 circumstances were wanting, whereby they might be 

 enabled to burst forth and complete their species." 



"The world," he avers, "is pregnant with the 

 causes of things that are coming to the birth ; 



