214 ORIGINAL SIN 



either one can be held without prejudicing catholic 

 doctrine; but neither one can claim ecumenical author- 

 ity. Modern science is thought by some to have thrown 

 difficulties around the acceptance of either. According 

 to traducianism both the souls and the bodies of infants 

 are derived through natural generation from their 

 parents; whereas, according to creationism, the body 

 only is thus derived, the soul coming into existence 

 in each case by special creation, and being united with 

 the physical organism after its conception — whether 

 immediately or at some subsequent stage of develop- 

 ment in the womb. 



If traducianism is true, the inference is natural that 

 moral dispositions, so far as they are transmissible, are 

 directly and spiritually transmitted through the deriva- 

 tion of the souls of children from their parents. The 

 fact of moral heredity is not to be denied, although 

 different views are tenable as to the amount of such 

 heredity, and both theologians and physical scientists 

 can be found who regard this heredity as dependent 

 upon the validity of the traducianist view. 



The naturalistic philosophy obviously leaves no place 

 for the antithesis between matter and spirit which is 

 involved in the argument between traducianists and 

 creationists. And among those modern scientists who 

 are not thus precluded from considering the problem 



lion and Its Relation to Religious Thought, pp. 293-304; R. I. Wil- 

 berforce, Incarnation, pp. 29 et seq.; H. P. Liddon, Some Elernents of 

 Religion, pp. 93-104; St. Thos. Aq., Sum. Theol., I. ex, cxviii; Cath. 

 Encyclopedia^ 5. v. "Creationism," Vol. IV, p. 475. 



