EVOLUTION AND TELEOLOGY. 815 



or into both, the deduction would have been thirty or forty. If 

 Pennsylvania must tax bonds of this description, she must confine it 

 to bonds issued exclusively by her own corporations. Our conclu- 

 sion is that to permit the deduction of the tax from the coupons in 

 question would be giving effect to the acts of the Pennsylvania 

 Legislature upon property and interests lying beyond her juris- 

 diction." 



EVOLUTION" AND TELEOLOGY.* 



By the Ekv. Dr. J. A. ZAHM, C. S. C, 



PRESIDENT OF THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL SECTION. 



IN the present paper it is not my purpose to discuss the evidence 

 in favor of evolution or the arguments which may be urged 

 against it. This has been done quite thoroughly in our previous 

 meetings at Paris and Brussels. I shall assume evolution as proved, 

 or rather, that it is the only working theory which is competent to 

 meet the demands of modern science. As against the alternative 

 theory of creationism the evidence, I think, all must admit, is over- 

 whelmingly in favor of evolution. I am quite willing to agree with 

 our retiring president, M. le Marquis de Nadaillac, that as yet the 

 theory is not proved by any demonstrative evidence, for the simple 

 reason that, in the very nature of the case, anything approaching 

 an absolute demonstration, at least in our present state of knowledge, 

 is impossible. But, notwithstanding this, even the most skeptical 

 must concede that evolution is a probable theory, and this is all that 

 need here be claimed. 



I freely grant that, a priori, creationism is quite possible, but is 

 it probable? Science answers "No." As to affording any positive 

 evidence in behalf of the special creation of species, it is absolutely 

 mute, and the negative evidence is of such a character that there 

 are few, if any, serious men of science who are willing to consider 

 it as having any weight whatever. A priori, creationism is possible ; 

 a posteriori, it is so highly improbable as to be practically ruled out 

 of court. Indeed, those who still cling to the theory rely either on 

 negative evidence, which in such questions is never conclusive or sat- 

 isfactory, or appeal for support of their view to the account of crea- 

 tion given in the book of Genesis. They assume that the Genesiac 

 narrative is to be interpreted literally, whereas all contemporary 

 biblical scholars of note declare that it is to be understood not liter- 

 ally but allegorically. Nor is there anything new in thus envisag- 



* Read before the International Catholic Scientific Congress, Fribourg, Switzerland, 

 August 20, 1897. 



