74 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



but none so distinguished as that of Augustine, 

 Bishop of Hippo from 395 to 430 A. D. This greatest 

 of the Fathers of the Church sought, as has been 

 remarked already, to bring the system of Aristotle, 

 the greatest of ancient naturalists, int(5 line with 

 Christian theology. His range of study was well- 

 nigh as wide as that of the famous Stagirite, but 

 we are here concerned only with so much of it as 

 bears on an attempt to graft the development theory 

 on the dogma of special creation. Augustine, ac- 

 cepting the Old Testament cosmogony as a revela- 

 tion, believed that the world was created out of noth- 

 ing, but, this initial paradox accepted, he argued 

 that God had endowed matter with certain powers 

 of self-development which left free the operation of 

 natural causes in the production of plants and ani- 

 mals. With this, however, as already noted, he held, 

 with preceding philosophers and with his fellow- 

 theologians, the doctrine of spontaneous generation. 

 It explained to him the existence of apparently pur- 

 poseless creatures, as flies, frogs, mice, etc. " Cer- 

 tain very small animals," he says, " may not have 

 been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may 

 have originated later from putrefying matter." Not 

 till the seventeenth century did the experiments of 

 Redi refute a doctrine which had held part of the 

 biological field for above two thousand years, and 

 which still has adherents. Of course Augustine, as 

 do modern Catholic biologists, excepted man from 

 the operation of secondary causes, and held that his 



