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literal truth of Eve's creation, he does not hesitate to call it absurd. He never was compelled to retract his statements, still less was excommunicated in default of so doing.

We may now turn to consider the special question at issue between most biologists and a certain number of theologians. I mean the question of evolution.

I happen to know with certainty. To 1518. In 1519 he was made Bishop of such I offer the foregoing observations, Gaeta, and in 1523 was sent as legate to which I think will effectually dissipate Hungary. their scruples. Men of science of the In his great commentary on Holy Scripseventeenth century were appalled and ture he teaches that the account of the paralyzed by the condemnation of Galileo. creation of Eve is but a sort of parable Descartes, in his letter to Mersenne, de- intended to show the intimacy of the mar clares how that event almost decided him riage tie; that the serpent described as to burn his papers, or at least to let no speaking to Eve is only the symbol of an one see them, and he refrained from pub-internal temptation; with other interprelishing his treatise on the world. Cath-tations equally free. As to a belief in the olic men of science of the present day should determine that the Church shall not through them be exposed to the reproach to which Descartes thus laid it open namely, of actually impeding scientific progress. They should in no wise allow their efforts after truth to be checked by the declaration of ecclesiastical authorities, seeing clearly now that the faithful Catholics who held true doctrine in the As to the truth of the doctrine of evoluseventeenth century were the condemned tion generally and in some form, it would and not the condemners. Mr. Murphy be a waste of time and space at this day tells us as to evolution, that "so direct, so precise, so circumstantial, is the Scrip. tural account of man's creation, that, if the evolution theory were true, the sacred writings, if they intended to deceive us, could not have chosen language better calculated to effect that end." Might not the very same thing be said as to the Scripture account of the universality of the Deluge, the universal destruction outside the ark of men and animals, if the Deluge was not universal, and if multitudes not only of animals, but even of men, outside that ark, were, in fact, not destroyed? Yet an English Catholic bishop tells us we may hold that men as well as animals were not so destroyed.

Exegesis is not my study, I have no skill in, or knowledge of it; I only judge what to believe in this matter according to the light of science, and that light shows me that it was impossible for all animals to have been destroyed, and I judge similarly with respect to the general doctrine of evolution.

to argue at any length in its favor. Its truth is generally conceded, and may at any time suddenly become a matter of sensible experience. It is otherwise, of course, as regards the question concerning man's bodily origin, the mode of which must remain a matter of analogical inference; and, as Darwin himself has remarked, analogy is a misleading guide. Nevertheless, a high scientific probability may attach to a physical truth inaccessible to demonstration, as for example, the prob ability that the side of the moon we can never see is not of a totally different nature and aspect from that side of it which we do see. I have already on several occasions tried to show that different considerations point in different directions as to the problem of man's bodily origin: (1) the similarity between the phenomena presented by the bodies of men and certain animals both in their adult condition and in their process of development, points to a similarity between their modes of origin; (2) the dissimilarity between their mental natures points to a dissimilarity between their modes of origin in so far as man's body may be inseparably connected with his mental nature. It is thus con

How much latitude has existed in the Church even in the early days of the triumphs which physical science has not ceased to enjoy for the last four centuries, is plain from the following judgments pub-ceivable that God might or might not have licly emitted by the great Roman theologian Cajetan.t He was made a cardinal in 1517, and sent as legate to Germany in

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miraculously created the human body, though analogy is strongly in favor of its natural evolution.

It has been urged by Darwin and others

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that God would have deceived us if he had made a body with all the physical signs of evolution but which had not been in fact evolved. This does not, however, appear to me to involve any moral diffi. culty, on the view that theologians have no more right to dictate what is to be our belief in this matter than to dictate what shall be our belief as to the revolution of the earth or as to the number of ages during which it has been the theatre of human activity. We are then in no way bound to arrive at a correct solution of the problem, nor is that solution of any practical importance to us. By the grace of God we are what we are, and we have the same lofty intellectual nature and the same responsibility, whether the matter of our material frame came to us directly from the inorganic world or indirectly through the ministry of our lower fellowcreatures. The moral aspect of the question, however, would become quite changed if we were required to believe that our eternal destiny depended in part on our not making a mistake in this matter. In that case it seems clear that a good God, however much he might test our will by allowing certain difficulties to attend the evidences of religion, could never have miraculously created a number of corporeal characters all pointing to a conclusion to accept which would involve our damnation, and not a single character pointing towards the one only conclusion which would be absolutely nec essary for our salvation. Must not such a belief involve a complete and unavoidable moral contradiction? This is a question which each man's conscience must answer. Let our beliefs in. this matter be supposed free and unfettered as to their consequences, and then either origin of man's corporeal frame is conceivable ; but let a belief in its miraculous creation be admitted as a condition upon which alone we can escape eternal torments, and then the conclusion seems to me irresistible, that a body directly and independently formed with characters so fatally misleading could never have been the creation of a God of truth and goodness, but rather of a malignant father of lies.

A writer such as Mr. Murphy should carefully inform himself of the scientific as well as the ecclesiastical bearings of the question before he ventures to press upon our acceptance, as he does, a doctrine so inexpressibly shocking as that our eternal happiness depends upon our believing in the miraculous and sudden creation of the bodies of Adam and Eve.

Nothing could well be more prejudicial to the cause which Mr. Murphy may be supposed to have at heart than the production of a widespread conviction that loyal Church membership necessitates the acceptance of anything which at one and the same time revolts both our conscience and our scientific judgment.

No decree of pope or council can, however, be quoted as condemning evolution, and I venture to predict that it will be a long time before even any such authori tative condemnation can be cited against that doctrine as can be cited against the doctrine of the earth's diurnal and orbital motion. But the Rev. Mr. Murphy himself concedes that no judgment was passed that was indisputably ex cathedra even against Copernicanism. A fortiori, then, no authoritative judgment whatever has yet issued against evolution. As, however, no one can venture to affirm that more pressure may not be brought to bear against evolution than has yet been brought to bear against it, men who are both honest students of science and loyal children of the Church may be fairly expected by non-Catholics to state candidly the position they would be prepared to take up in the event of any such pressure.

A loyal Catholic must of course say that when any matter is clearly of faith, his conclusions must be wrong if they are opposed to it. But after all, and in every case, he has but his judgment to rely on as to the fact, or nature, of the supposed conflict. It is only through his own reason, informed by his senses, that he can possibly know that any decision whatever has been made (supposing it to have been made), and therefore he has always the choice whether to distrust the fact of the decision or the fact of physical science.

But though nothing can be quoted as at once certainly ex cathedra and at the same time opposed to evolution, yet pronouncements which some theologians deem infallible utterances seem to have been issued against such a minimizing of the authority of ecclesiastical judges and congregations as is here contended for. This I should not be candid if I did not admit. It is true that the pope, in his celebrated Munich brief, does bid men of science submit themselves to such author. ities.

Certain utterances then may be cited in opposition to the views here advocated, and I shall be asked how I reconcile them with the "Mirari vos," the "Quanta cura," and the Syllabus. I might reply to such a question in the language of many

theologians who, when confronted with It is not lightly, then, nor without a perplexing declarations of physical sci- deep sense of responsibility that I give ence, content themselves with replying my testimony to what I believe to be a that "truth cannot contradict truth," and truth alike necessary for either cause. that there must be therefore some satis- I well know that many anxious inquirfactory explanation of such apparent con-ers amongst Catholics are seeking how flicts. I should shortly reply, however, best to fulfil their duties both to their sciin the words of the Jesuit Father Hill: ence and to their faith. To such inquir"The criterion of scientific and philosoph-ers I venture to offer the considerations ical truth is not authority, but evidence." here put forward, which will, I trust, furI decline to attempt the task of furnish-nish a reply to Mr. Murphy, and at the ing an interpretation of legal ecclesiasti- same time help to guide the Catholic man cal documents for which I have not the of science as to his duty. His duty aprequisite technical knowledge, but I am pears to me to be clear. He owes to God quite sure that authority can be justified the faithful and industrious use of the only by reason, and cannot, therefore, be talent entrusted to him, undeterred by the justified if it opposes reason. The error clamor of well-meaning but incompetent of Galileo's condemnation, as I have said, obstructives. As a truly loyal son of the is not likely to be repeated nowadays, but Church he should be careful that she may if per impossibile authority was ever to de- never through him incur the reproach of mand the affirmation that death first ab hampering and impeding the course of solutely came into the world after Adam's science. Bearing in mind the wise warnsin, it would be simply impossible for using of Cardinal Pitra and the ever-memoin the face of the many palæozoic fos-rable words (before quoted) of Leo XIII., sils, to make such an affirmation. If su- on the one hand, and the lesson taught by preme authority and intuitive truth could and did come into collision, then authority would simplify stultify itself. For it is a recognized canon of logic, that if any authority denies any proposition supported by a preponderance of evidence, that authority loses claim to our submission in whatever degree the evidence for the proposition is greater than that for the authority itself. Nor has even supreme authority a right to protest against such a hypothetical proposition as that just made, since St. Paul himself gives us an example of the kind when he says: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain" (1 Cor. xv. 14). No one could be so unreasonable as to

the history of the seventeenth century on the other, I conceive it to be the duty of the Catholic man of science, whether cleric or layman, calmly to pursue his scientific investigations, with the aid of such theories as may best help him on his way. He may also, I am persuaded, comfort himself with the assurance that the supreme rulers in the domain of theology will now view with favor and approval, rather than with jealousy and reprobation, the rapid development of that branch of knowledge which concerns itself with organic life, and with all that relates to the merely animal nature of man - the science of biology.

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The strange result, then, of the sevenaffirm that language may not be used re-teenth-century struggle a result as hapspecting the Church which may be freely py as it was one impossible to foresee used respecting the Church's lord and has been the permanent enlargement master. So to affirm would at least indi- of Catholic intellectual liberty in every cate a tone of mind certainly unapostolic. department of science without exception, For my own part-in spite of my love to a degree which not the most sanguine of science, which is the deepest seated of our predecessors could have hoped for; and most rooted feeling I possess, and and this result has only recently been though the study of biology has been the made manifest by the defeated efforts of main occupation of my life, yet I have the extreme infallibilists of the era of never made exaggerated claims in its the Vatican Council. The cause of evoname. Strongly impressed with the in-lution, then, in any subsequent struggle trinsically relative insignificance of all is gained before that struggle has begun, physical questions when compared with those which relate to man's noblest aspirations and best future hopes, I have ever deemed it my highest privilege to be allowed to point out the essential harmony which exists between the truths of science and the dictates of religion.

and we have to thank the once for all happily decided battle between theologians and astronomers for having made once for all superfluous any such subse quent battle between evolutionists and theologians.

ST. GEORGE MIVART.

From Chambers' Journal. A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

BY MRS. OLIPHANT.

CHAPTER XXVII.

FRANCES became accustomed to the presence of young Ramsay after this. He appeared almost every day, very often in the afternoon, eager for tea, and always disposed to inquire for further renseigne ments, though he was quite certain that he was not to leave England till autumn at the earliest. She began to regard him as a younger brother, or cousin at the least, a perfectly harmless individual, with whom she could talk when he wanted her with a gentle complacence, without any reference to her own pleasure. As a matter of fact it did not give her any pleasure to talk to Claude. She was kind to him for his sake; but she had no desire for his presence on her own account. It surprised her that he ever could have been thought of as a possible mate for Constance. Constance was So much cleverer, so much more advanced in every way than herself, that to suppose she could put up with what Frances found so little attractive, was a constant amazement to the girl. She could not but express this on one of the occasions, not so very frequent as she had expected, on which her mother and she were alone together.

"Is it really true," she said at the end of a long silence, "that there was a question of a marriage between Constance and Mr. Ramsay?"

"It is really quite true," said her mother with a smile. "And why not? Do you disapprove?"

"It is not that I disapprove; I have no right to disapprove; it is only that it seems so impossible."

"Why? I see nothing impossible in it. He is of suitable age; he is handsome. You cannot deny that he is handsome, however much you may dislike him, my dear."

"But I don't dislike him at all; I like bim very much in a kind of way.'

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"You have every appearance of doing so," said Lady Markham with meaning. "You talk to him more, I think, than to any one else."

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"Oh, I don't ask any reason, Frances. If you like his society, that is reason enough-the best of reasons. And evidently he likes you. He would, no doubt, be more suitable to you than to Constance."

"Mamma! I don't know what you mean." Frances woke up suddenly from her musing state, and looked at her mother with wide open, startled eyes.

"I don't mean anything. I only ask you to point out wherein his unsuitability lies. Young, handsome, nice, and very rich. What could a girl desire more? You think, perhaps, as you have been so simply brought up, that a heroine like Con should have had a duke or an earl at the least. But people think less of the importance of titles as they know society better. Claude is of an excellent old family — better than many peers. She would have been a very fortunate young woman with such an establishment; but she has taken her own way. I hope you will never be so hot-headed as your sister, Frances. You look much more practical and reasonable. You will not, I think, dart off at a tangent without warning or thought."

Frances looked her mother doubtfully in the face. Her feelings fluctuated strangely in respect to this central figure in the new world round her. To make acquaintance with your parents for the first time when you have reached the critical age, and are no longer able to accept everything with the matter-of-fact serenity of a child, is a curious experience. Children, indeed, are tremendous critics, at the tribunal of whose judgment we all stand unawares, and have our just place allotted to us, with an equity which happily leads to no practical conclusions, but which no tribunal on earth can equal for clear sight and remorseless decision. Eighteen is not quite so abstract as eight; yet the absence of familiarity, and that love which is instinctive, and happily quite above all decisions of the judgment, makes, in such an extraordinary case as that of Frances, the sudden call upon the critical faculties, the consciousness that accompanies their exercise, and the underlying sense, never absent, that all this is unnatural and wrong, into a complication full of distress and uncertainty. vague question whether it were possible that such a conflict as that which had ended in Constance's flight, should ever arise between Lady Markham and herself passed through the mind of Frances. it should do so, the expedient which had been open to Constance would be to herself impossible. All pride and delicacy of feeling, all sense of natural justice, would prevent her from adopting that course. The question would have to be worked out between her mother and herself, should it ever occur. Was it possi

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had land agents to write to, and lawyers, and other necessary people. In this, Frances did not do justice to her mother, who also had business letters to write, and did a great deal in stocks, and kept her eyes on the money market. The girl sat and watched her with a sort of fasci. nation as her pen ran lightly over sheet after sheet. Sometimes Lady Markham was full of tenderness and generosity, and had the look of understanding everybody's feelings. She was never unkind. She never took a bad view of any one, or sug

ble that it could ever occur? She looked this was one of the principal occupations at Lady Markham, who had returned to evidently of a great lady's life. Lady her usual morning occupation of writing Markham considered it very grave, and letters, with a questioning gaze. There "a duty." She allowed nothing to interhad been a pause, and Lady Markham fere with her correspondence. had waited for a moment for a reply. my letters to write," she said, as who Then she had taken up her pen again, should say, "I have my day's work to and with a smiling nod had returned to do." By degrees Frances lost her respect her correspondence. for this day's work, and would watch the Frances sat and pondered with her face manufacture of one note after another turned towards the writing-table, at which with eyes that were unwillingly cynical, her mother spent so much of her time. wondering within herself whether it would The number of letters that were written make any difference to the world if pen there every morning filled her with amaze- and ink were forbidden in that house. ment. Waring had written no letters, Markham, too, spoke of writing his letters and received only one now and then, as a valid reason for much consumption which Frances understood to be about of time. But then, no doubt, Markham business. She had looked very respectfully at first on the sheaves which were every day taken away, duly stamped, from that well-worn but much decorated writing-table. When it had been suggested to her that she too must have letters to write, she had dutifully compiled her little bulletin for her father, putting aside as quite a different matter the full chronicle of her proceedings, written at a great many reprises, to Mariuccia, which somehow did not seem at all to come under the same description. It had, however, begun to become apparent to Frances, unwill-gested evil or interested motives, as even ingly, as she made acquaintance with everything about her, that Lady Markham's correspondence was really by no means of the importance which at the first glance it appeared. It seemed to consist generally in the conveyance of little bits of news, of little engagements, of the echoes of what people said and did; and it was replied to by endless shoals of little notes on every variety of tinted, gilt, and perfumed paper, with every kind of monogram, crest, and device, and every new idea in shape and form which the genius of the fashionable stationer could work out. "I have just heard from Lady So-to perceive the junction of these different and-so the funniest story," Lady Markham would say to her son, repeating the anecdote - which on many occasions Frances, listening, did not see the point of. But then both mother and son were cleverer people than she was. "I must write and let Mary St. Serle and Louisa Avenel know it will amuse them so;" and there was at once an addition of two letters to the budget. Frances did not think all under her breath, as it were, in involuntary unexpressed comment that the tale was worth a pretty sheet of paper, a pretty envelope both decorated with Lady Markham's cipher and coronet and a penny stamp. But so it was; and

Frances perceived, in her limited experi ence, so many people to do. But, on the other hand, there would come into her face sometimes a look - which seemed to say that she might be inexorable, if once she had made up her mind: a look before which it seemed to Frances that flight like that of Constance would be the easiest way. Frances was not sufficiently in structed in human nature to know that anomalies of this kind are common enough; and that nobody is always and in all matters good, any more than anybody is in all things ill. It troubled her

qualities in her mother; and still more it troubled her to think what, in case of coming to some point of conflict, she should do. How would she get out of it? Would it be only by succumbing wholly, or had she the courage in her to fight it out?

"Little un," said Markham, coming up to her suddenly, "why do you look at the mother so? Are you measuring yourself against her, to see how things would stand if it came to a fight?"

"Markham! Frances started with a great blush of guilt. "I did not know you were here. I never heard you come in."

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