REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 431 



Misapprehensions Regarding Evolution. 



Many, it may here be observed, look on the the- 

 ory of Evolution with suspicion, because they fail 

 to understand its true significance. They seem to 

 think that it is an attempt to account for the origin 

 of things when, in reality, it deals only with their 

 historical development. It deals not with creation, 

 with the origin of things, but with the modus creandi, 

 or, rather, with the modus for mandi, after the uni- 

 verse was called into existence by Divine Omnipo- 

 tence. Evolution, then, postulates creation as an 

 intellectual necessity, for if there had not been a 

 creation there would have been nothing to evolve, 

 and Evolution would, therefore, have been an im- 

 possibility. 



And for the same reason, Evolution postulates 

 and must postulate, a Creator, the sovereign Lord 

 of all things, the Cause of causes, the terminus a 

 quo as well as the terminus ad quern of all that exists 

 or can exist. But Evolution postulates still more. 

 In order that Evolution might be at all possible it 

 was necessary that there should have been not only 

 an antecedent creation ex nihilo, but also that there 

 should have been an antecedent involution, or a crea- 

 tion in potentia. To suppose that simple brute 

 matter could, by its own motion or by any power 

 inherent in matter as such, have been the sole effi- 

 cient cause of the Evolution of organic from inor- 

 ganic matter, of the higher from the lower forms of 

 life, of the rational from the irrational creature, is 



