AUGUSTINE. 



71 



except among the Arabs. It is a record of the 

 preservation of the progress towards the idea which 

 the Greeks had made. In the very decades when 

 this progress was stamped out of theology in Spain 

 and Italy, the modern era in the development of 

 the idea was opening in the teachings of Francis 

 Bacon and of the natural philosophers who closely 

 succeeded him. 



The Fathers and Schoolmen. 



Gregory of Nyssa (331-396) taught that Crea- 

 tion was potential. God imparted to matter its 

 fundamental properties and laws. The objects and 

 completed forms of the Universe developed gradu- 

 ally out of chaotic material. 



Augustine (353-430) drew this distinction still 

 more sharply, as Cotterill and Giittler show, between 

 the virtual creation of organisms, the ratio semi- 

 nalis, and the actual visible coming forth of things 

 out of formless matter. All development takes its 

 natural course through the powers imparted to 

 matter by the Creator. Even the corporeal struct- 

 ure of man himself is according to this plan and 

 therefore a product of this natural development. 

 Augustine, as to the origin of life, took his ground 

 half-way between Biogenesis and Abiogenesis. 

 From the beginning there had existed two kinds of 

 germs of living things : first, visible ones, placed by 

 the Creator in animals and plants ; and second, in- 



