XII] THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION. 283 



and many other references to the same effect could easily 

 be given, but these may suffice. 



It is then evident that ancient and most venerable theo- 

 logical authorities distinctly assert derivative creation, and 

 thus harmonize with all that modern science can possibly 

 require. 



It may indeed truly be said with Roger Bacon, " The 

 saints never condemned many an opinion which the moderns 

 think ought to be condemned." ' 



The various extracts given show clearly how far " evolu- 

 tion " is from any necessary opposition to the most orthodox 

 theology. The same may be said of spontaneous genera- 

 tion. The most recent form of it, lately advocated by Dr. 

 H. Charlton Bastian, 34 teaches that matter exists in two 

 different forms, the crystalline (or statical) and the colloidal 

 (or dynamical) conditions. It also teaches that colloidal 

 matter, when exposed to certain conditions, presents the 

 phenomena of life, and that it can be formed from crystal- 

 line matter, and thus that the prima materia, of which these 

 are diverse forms, contains potentially all the multitudinous 

 kinds of animal and vegetable existence. This theory, more- 

 over, harmonizes well with the views here advocated, for 

 just as crystalline matter builds itself, under suitable con- 

 ditions, along certain definite lines, so analogously colloidal 

 matter has its definite lines and directions of development. 

 It is not collected in haphazard, accidental aggregations, 

 but evolves according to its proper laws and special proper- 

 ties. 



23 Roger Bacon, Opus tertmm, c. ix., p. 27, quoted in the Rambler 

 for 1859, vol. xii., p. 375. 



34 See Nature, June and July, 1870. Those who, like Profs. Huxley 

 and Tyndall, do not accept his conclusions, none the less agree with him 

 in principle, though they limit the evolution of the organic world from 

 the inorganic to a very remote period of the world's history. (See Pro 

 Huxley's address to the British Association at Liverpool, 1870, p. 17.) 



