THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 345 



theories now in vogue which claim that man is genet- 

 ically related to the inferior animals? This is a 

 question which is often put, and one which, far from 

 being treated with derision, as is so often the case, 

 should receive a serious and a deliberate answer. 



We have seen that a belief in spontaneous gen- 

 eration, and in the development of the higher forms 

 of animal and plant life from the lower forms, is 

 quite compatible with both revelation and faith ; but 

 can this likewise be said of the development of man 

 from a monkey or from any other inferior animal ? 



The Human Soul. 



As to the soul of man we can at once emphatic- 

 ally declare, that it is in nowise evolved from the 

 souls of animals, but is, on the contrary, and in the 

 case of each individual, directly and immediately 

 created by God Himself. I do not say that this is a 

 dogma of faith, because the question has never been 

 formally defined by the Church. It is, however, 

 Catholic doctrine, and has been taught almost uni- 

 versally from the time of the apostles. 



I say " almost universally," because other opin- 

 ions regarding the origin of the soul have been held 

 and defended even by some of the most eminent of 

 the Church's Doctors and Fathers. Origen, for in- 

 stance, misled by a conception of Plato, imagined 

 that God, in the beginning, created a large number 

 of spirits, all equally endowed with natural and 

 supernatural gifts. Many of these spirits having 

 sinned, God, to punish them, created the corporeal 

 world and imprisoned them in various kinds of 



