402 MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT SCIENCE 



"The difficulties which the theologian has to meet when 

 he is called upon to give some account of the origin and 

 pature of the soul certainly cannot be said to have been 

 increased by the establishment of the Darwinian theory. 

 For from the earliest days of the Church, ingenious specu- 

 lation has been lavished on the subject. 



" St. Augustine says (I give a translation of the Latin 

 original) : ' With regard to the four following opinions 

 concerning the soul — viz. (i) whether souls are handed on 

 from parent to child by propagation ; or (2) are suddenly 

 created in individuals at birth ; or (3) existing already 

 elsewhere are divinely sent into the bodies of the new- 

 born ; or (4) slip into them of their own motion — it is un- 

 desirable for anyone to make a rash pronouncement, since 

 up to the present time the question has never been dis- 

 cussed and decided by catholic writers of holy books on 

 account of its obscurity and perplexity — or, if "it has been 

 dealt with, no such treatises have hitherto come into my 

 hands.' " 



There must be many who will be glad to shake off the 

 illusion of explanation which is no explanation, and to 

 escape from the futile discussion of the possible behaviour 

 of spirits and ghosts born in the dreams of primaeval 

 savages. They will gladly accept the conclusion that the 

 marvellous qualities and activities of living things and 

 that inscrutable wonder, the mind of man, are outcomes 

 of the orderly process of Nature no less than are the 

 miracles which we call a buttercup, a- rock crystal, a 

 glacier, the noon-day sun ! We can trace, by observation 

 and inference, the orderly growth and development of 

 these things from simpler things ; we can discover con- 

 tinuity and common properties determining their diverse 

 existence. But we find no explanation of them ; we cannot 

 account for the properties of matter which determine 

 them, nor for the existence of anything — whether it be a 



