REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 417 

 Evolution and Special Creation. 



In reference to the popular objections against 

 Evolution that it reposes on no positive demonstra- 

 tion ; that none of the arguments advanced in its be- 

 half are conclusive ; that all of them, whether taken 

 severally or collectively are vitiated by some flaw, 

 and that, consequently, they are not of such a char- 

 acter as to command the assent of reasonable men, 

 it may be observed that all of them can be urged 

 with equal, and even with greater force against the 

 rival of the Evolution theory, to wit, the theory 

 of special creation. 1 Contrary to what its support- 

 ers would be disposed to admit, it has no founda- 

 tion but assumption, and can claim no more sub- 

 stantial basis than certain postulates which are 

 entirely gratuitous, or certain views regarding the 

 Genesiac account of creation, the truth of which 

 views may as readily and with as much reason 

 be denied as it can be affirmed. For as the 

 learned Abb Guillemet declared before a sympa- 

 thetic audience, composed of distinguished eccle- 

 siastics and scholarly laymen, at the International 

 Catholic Scientific Congress at Brussels, the theory 

 of special creation, or fixism as he prefers to call 

 it, explains nothing whatever in science. Not only 

 this, "it closes the door to all explanations of na- 

 ture, and notably so in the domain of paleontology, 



1 According to the theory of special creation as formerly 

 held, everything in the inorganic, as well as in the organic 

 world, was created by God directly and essentially as it now 

 appears. But as at present understood, special creation means 

 rather that the Deity created immediately all the species and 

 higher groups, of animals and plants, as they now exist. 



