BOOK REVIEWS 211 
BOOK REVIEWS 
~ In this section are reviews of new, or particularly important and interesting books 
_in the fields of natural science. Books dealing with botany or kindred subjects should 
be sent to the Editor, the University of Notre Dame. All other books for review 
should be sent to Carroll Lane Fenton, at the Walker Museum, the University of Chi- 
cago, Ill. Publishers are requested to furnish prices with books. 
Darwinism and Catholic Thought by Canon Dorlodot, D. D., D. Se. 
Translated by the Rev. Ernest Messenger of 
St. Edmund’s College, Ware. 
Vol. One; The Origin of Species. Burns and Oates, 1922. 
This is a 16 mo. of 184 pages, and 8 additional pages in the table of 
contents. On the title page we read, “Vol. One; The Origin of Species.” 
There are two conferences in this volume dealing with the origin of 
species, and the author promises another conference, or, perhaps, several 
other conferences on the descent of man. 
The first conference deals with “Darwinism and the Work of the Six 
Days.” The second conference treats “Darwinism in the Light of Catholic 
Tradition and Catholic Philosophy.” The book was written as a rejoinder 
to certain criticisms that were made on the address of the author, deliv- 
ered as official delegate of Louvain before the University of Cambridge 
on the occasion of the Darwinian centenary. The conferences were “de- 
livered during the war before the professors of the University of Louvain 
at the invitation of the rector.” (From the foreword to the French 
edition.) 
The general question that is treated in the two conferences is,—‘What 
judgment must we pass upon the Darwinian theory from the point of 
view of Catholic orthodoxy, if we leave out the special subject of the 
origin of man?” (p. 3). The fundamental teaching of Darwin is summed 
up in two propositions;— 
1) The primary origin of living things is the result of a special in- 
fluence on the part of the Creator, Who infused life into one or a few 
elementary organisms. 
2) These organisms, by evolving in the course of ages, have given 
rise to all organic species which exist at the present time, as well as 
those that have come down to us only in the fossil state. (p. 4). 
Dorlodot calls this a “fairly moderate system of Natural Evolution” 
and says that opposed to it are two “extremist opinions, Absolute Evo- 
lution and Creationism or Fixism.” 
“Absolute Evolution denies the special intervention of God, even in 
the origin of life; it attributes the first origin of living beings to a 
natural evolution of inorganic matter, which became organized and 
