ioo SCIENCE IN BOND AGE " 



made his position quite secure, and then more 

 boldly, etc. etc." 



What in the ordinary man of science is caution, 

 becomes cowardice in the Catholic. We shall 

 find another example of this in the case of Buffon 

 (1707-1788) often cited as that of a man who 

 believed all that Darwin believed and one hundred 

 years before Darwin, and who yet was afraid to 

 say it because of the Church to which he belonged. 

 This mistake is partly due to that lamentable 

 ignorance of Catholic teaching, not to say that 

 lamentable incapacity for clear thinking, on these 

 matters, which afflicts some non-Catholic writers. 

 Let us take an example from an eminently fairly 

 written book, in which, dealing with Buffon, the 

 author says : "I cannot agree with those who 

 think that Buffon was an out-and-out evolutionist, 

 who concealed his opinions for fear of the Church. 

 No doubt he did trim his sails the palpably 

 insincere Mais non, il est certai npar la revelation 

 que tons les animaux out egalement participe a la 

 grace de la creation, following hard upon the too 

 bold hypothesis of the origin of all species from a 

 single one, is proof of it." Of course it is nothing 

 of the kind, for, whatever Buffon may have meant, 

 and none but himself could tell us, it is perfectly 

 clear that whether creation was mediate (as under 

 transformism considered from a Christian point 

 of view it would be) or immediate, every 

 created thing would participate in the grace 

 of creation, which is just the point which the 

 writer from whom the quotation has been made 

 has missed. 



