130 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



does controvert Huxley's statement that Suarez 

 is a leading authority, and quotes Cardinal Nor- 

 ris and others upon the views of Augustine, Al- 

 bertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas to the 

 effect that these teachers are still the standards 

 upon these questions. 



The truth is that all classes of theologians de- 

 parted from the original philosophical and Aris- 

 totelian standards of some of the Fathers of the 

 Church, and that Special Creation became the 

 universal and orthodox theologic teaching from 

 the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the 

 nineteenth century. 



The Awakening of Science 



Before speaking of the philosophers who now 

 became the custodians of the evolution idea and 

 of the speculative writers of the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries, let us glance for a moment 

 at the general advance of knowledge. 



Universities in Europe were founded at the 

 beginning of the twelfth century, following those 

 established by the Arabs; Oxford was founded 

 at the beginning of the thirteenth century. We 

 have described above (pp. 119-20) the rudi- 

 ments of palaeontology and of geology as they 

 appeared in Italian universities of the fifteenth 

 and sixteenth centuries and in the brilliant mind 

 of Leonardo da Vinci. 



