2 o6 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



which Evolution demands, a sense which, as we 

 have seen, may be attributed to the words of the 

 inspired record, without either distorting the mean- 

 ing of terms, or in any way doing violence to the 

 text ' (Evolution and Dogma. By the Reverend J. A. 

 Zahm, Ph.D., C.S.C., pp. 364, 365). 



Upon this suggested revision of writings which 

 are claimed as forming part of a divine revelation, 

 one of the highest authorities, Francisco Suarez, thus 

 refers, in his Tractatus de Opere sex Dierum, to the 

 elastic interpretation given in his time to the * days ' 

 in the first chapter of Genesis. * It is not probable 

 that God, in inspiring Moses to write a history of 

 the Creation, which was to be believed by ordinary 

 people, would have made him use language the true 

 meaning of which it was hard to discover, and still 

 harder to believe.' Three centuries have passed since 

 these wise words were penned, and the reproof which 

 they convey is as much needed now as then. 



In near connection with the question of man's 

 origin is that of his antiquity. The existence of his 

 remains, rare as they are everywhere, in deposits 

 older than the Pleistocene or Quaternary Epoch is 

 not proven. This applies to the remarkable frag- 

 ments found by Dr. Dubois in 1892 in the Upper 

 Pliocene beds at Trinil, in Java. They consist of a 

 calvaria or portion of skull, two molar teeth, and a 

 thigh-bone, and, in the judgment of experts, are 

 believed to be ' the nearest likeness yet found of the 

 human ancestor at a stage immediately antecedent to 

 the definitely human phase, and y2t at the same time 

 in advance of the simian stage.' Hence the name 

 Pithecanthropus erectus, or ' upright ape-man/ 



