ANTICIPATION AND INTERPRETATION 11 



the final result, although, judged by modern 

 scientific standards, they arose mainly as a se- 

 ries of happy conjectures until the time of Aris- 

 totle, the first true naturalist and zoologist of 

 record. We know that Greek philosophy tinc- 

 tured early Christian theology; it is not so gen- 

 erally realized that the Aristotelian notion of the 

 gradual ascent and perfection of life led to a 

 scientific interpretation by Augustine and others 

 of the Mosaic account of the Creation. 



There arose in Europe a long Greek period 

 in the history of the evolution idea, extending 

 among the Fathers of the Church and, later, 

 among some of the Schoolmen, as shown in their 

 commentaries upon Creation which accord very 

 closely with the modern theistic conceptions of 

 Evolution. If the orthodoxy of Augustine had 

 remained the teaching of the Church, the final 

 establishment of Evolution would have come 

 far earlier than it did, certainly during the eigh- 

 teenth instead of the nineteenth century, and 

 the bitter controversy between science and theol- 

 ogy over this truth of Nature would never have 

 arisen. 



It was not until the seventeenth century that 

 the Jesuit Suarez and others contended that the 

 Book of Genesis contained a literal account of 

 the mode of Creation, and thereby Special Crea- 

 tion acquired a firm status as a scientific theory 



