THE SIMIAN ORIGIN OF MAN. 359 



Views of Cardinal Gonzales. 



The late Cardinal Gonzales, that profound Thom- 

 ist and man of science, whose untimely death 

 the Catholic world will mourn for a long time to 

 come, who has treated so luminously the question of 

 Evolution from the point of view of Scripture, 

 patristic theology and scholastic philosophy, has 

 suggested a modification of Mivart's theory, which, 

 he thinks, would make it more acceptable to theolo- 

 gians than it is as it now stands. If, he says, with- 

 out however committing himself to the opinion 

 expressed if instead of affirming, as the English 

 biologist does, that the body of Adam was nothing 

 more than a fully-developed ape, into which God in- 

 fused a rational soul, we admit that the body of the 

 first man was partly the product of Evolution from 

 some lower animal form, and partly the direct work 

 of God Himself, we may thereby, he opines, elimi- 

 nate many of the objections urged against the theory 

 as formulated by its author. According to this modi- 

 fied view, the body of man was developed from the 

 inferior forms of life only until a certain point, but 

 in this condition it was not prepared to be endowed 

 by an intelligent soul. This imperfect body, how- 

 ever, this unfinished product of evolutionary forces, 

 is taken in hand by the Almighty, who perfects what 

 was begun, gives it the .finishing touches, as it were, 

 and renders it a fit habitation, which it was not pre- 

 viously, for a soul which was to be made to His own 

 image and likeness, a soul which was to be dowered 



