THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 355 



angelic intervention in its formation and preparation 

 for the reception of its informing principle, the 

 rational soul. 1 According to this view God created 

 absolutely, ex nihilo, the human soul, but delegated 

 to His creatures, the angels, the formation, or at 

 least the formation in part, aliquod ministerium, of 

 man's body. It is manifest, however, that if God 

 could have formed the body of Adam through the 

 agency of angels, He could have communicated the 

 same power to other agencies, if He had so willed. 

 Instead, for instance, of delegating angels to form 

 the body of the common father of mankind, He 

 could, we may believe, have given to matter the 

 power of evolving itself, under the action of the 

 Divine administration, into all the forms of life 

 which we now behold, including the body of man. 

 The product of such an Evolution would not be a 

 rational animal, as man is, but an irrational one ; the 

 highest and noblest representative of the brute crea- 

 tion, but, nevertheless, only a brute. 



Such an irrational animal, the result of long years 

 of development, and the product of the play, during 

 untold aeons, of evolutionary forces on lower forms 

 of life, such a substratum it was, according to Miv- 

 art's theory, into which the Creator breathed the 

 breath of life and man forthwith " became a living 

 soul." According to this theory, then, God created 



1 " Quia igitur corpus humanum numquam formatum fuerat, 

 cujus virtu te per viam generationis aliud simile in specie formare- 

 tur,necesse fuit, quodprimum corpus hominis immediate formare- 

 tur a Deo. . . . Potuit tamen fieri ut aliquod ministerium in 

 formatione corporis primi hominis angeli exhiberent, sicut exhi- 

 bebunt in ultima resurrectione, pulveres colligendo." "Sum. 

 Theol.," pars i ma , qurcst. 91, art. 2. 



