XL] MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS. 271 



of nothing, for it is certain that innumerable generations 

 of other plants and animals lived upon the earth before 

 its present population. And when, Sunday after Sunday, 

 men who profess to be our instructors in righteousness 

 read out the statement, " In six days the Lord made 

 heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is," in 

 innumerable churches, they are either propagating what 

 they may easily know, and, therefore, are bound to know 7 

 to be falsities ; or, if they use the words in some non- 

 natural sense, they fall below the moral standard of the 

 much- abused Jesuit. 



Thus far the contradiction between Catholic verity 

 and Scientific verity is complete and absolute, quite 

 independently of the truth or falsehood of the doctrine 

 of evolution. But, for those who hold the doctrine of 

 evolution, all the Catholic verities about the creation 

 of living beings must be no less false. For them, the 

 assertion that the progenitors of all existing plants- 

 were made on the third day, of animals on the fifth and 

 sixth days, in the forms they now present, is simply 

 false. Nor can they admit that man was made sud- 

 denly out of the dust of the earth ; while it would be 

 an insult to ask an evolutionist whether he credits the- 

 'preposterous fable respecting the fabrication of woman* 

 to which Suarez pins his faith. If Suarez has rightly 

 stated Catholic doctrine, then is evolution utter heresy. 

 And such I believe it to be. In addition to the truth 

 of the doctrine of evolution, indeed, one of its greatest 

 merits in my eyes, is the fact that it occupies a position 

 of complete and irreconcilable antagonism to that 

 vigorous and consistent enemy of the highest intellec- 

 tual, moral, and social life of mankind the Catholic 

 Church. No doubt, Mr. Mivart, like other putters of 

 new wine into old bottles, is actuated by motives which 

 are worthy of respect, and even of sympathy ; but his 



