ORIGIN AND NA TURB OF LIFE. 331 



in the great laboratory of nature, the transition of 

 inorganic into organic and animated matter, or 

 should he, by some happy chance, be able to trans- 

 mute non-living into living matter, would there be 

 in such a discovery aught that would contravene 

 revealed truth, or militate against any of the received 

 dogmas of the Church? 



To this question we can at once, and without 

 hesitation, return an emphatic negative. The reply 

 has, indeed, been indicated in the preceding pages, 

 when discussing the views of the Fathers and the 

 Schoolmen respecting spontaneous generation. Not 

 only were they all fully persuaded of the fact of abio- 

 genesis, in the case of certain of the lower forms of 

 life, but they also laid down principles which are 

 quite compatible with the origination from brute 

 matter not only of the lower, but also of the higher 

 animals. Far from being opposed to the Evolution 

 of living from non-living matter, they, in many in- 

 stances, favored it as the more probable hypothesis. 

 But their views as to the efficient causes of such 

 Evolution differed toto ccelo from those entertained 

 by modern monists and agnostics. The latter attrib- 

 ute to brute matter, which, by its very nature, is 

 passive and inert, the power of passing unaided 

 from a lower to a higher plane. They completely 

 ignore the true formal and efficient causes of devel- 

 opment, and base their theories exclusively upon a 

 cause which is purely material. Not so the Fathers 

 and Doctors of the Church. They tell us that : " The 

 primordial elements alone were created in the strict 

 sense of the term, and that the rest of nature was 



