I..

IN February, 1891, I had the honor of speaking to a grave and learned audience on the subject of the relation which the famous doctrine that generally goes by the name of Charles Darwin bears to the Catholic doctrine of the Creation. My object then was to establish the liberty of the Catholic conscience with regard to an hypothesis, according to which it is maintained that living organisms did not appear on the earth at intervals by virtue of distinct acts of the Creator, but were modified and developed from generation to generation from one single originative form up to the immense present variety. I even went a step farther, and pronounced which of the two theories seemed to me to correspond most closely to the truth and to the religious ideal. To illustrate this assumption of mine, I shall make use of a simile which is not altogether new, but to which I shall give a fresh development. If watches, as well as having smooth white faces, delicate bodies, and an elaborate secret complication of subtle interior mechanism, could have intellect also, some of them would probably desire to meditate upon and to know the mystery of their origin. The common brass watches, and the more popular silver ones, might possibly be contented with an ingenuous and simple faith, and might believe that they had

NEW SERIES.-VOL. LXII., No. 1.

been created instantaneously and in their present form by means of a great omnipotent watch, common father of all watches; while, on the other hand, the gold watches, bright with enamel and precious stones, might easily fall into a refined scepticism with no thought but for ticking and sparkling. The chronometers, however, watches of more exquisite mechanism, would probably, although also rejecting the popular belief, inquire into the problem with liberty of thought and research. They would most likely arrive at the discovery that no watch could ever have been created instantaneously, because there is no doubt that its component parts must have been successively adapted to each other by a continuous process, resulting from the combined action of unknown causes; and therefore that a watch is not a work of creation, but of evolution or progressive development; that beyond this individual evolution there is also an evolution of the race throughout the ages, illustrated by the continuous and successive progress from the hydraulic clock up to the Bregnets and Pateks; that the idea of one great watch as creator of all other watches is altogether superstitious and peculiar to watches of inferior make, which cannot conceive of an ideal and divine being, except as having wheels, springs, case, dial and hands.

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It is not impossible, however, that

one of these chronometers might discover, by means of study, that the mechanism of watches was drawn by evolution out of pre-existing matter, through the agency or forces directed by an intelligent being so constituted that all watches may be in some sense compared to him; for it may almost be said that he is himself a species of watch, a moving piece of most delicate and complicate mechanism, a measurer of time. This ingenuous philosopher, with his brain of steel and gold, would find, too, that though he shared to a great extent the opinions of his more enlightened brethren, he yet ended by substantially confirming the simple faith of his brethren of the brain of brass; and the agreement between the most learned and the most ignorant would be proved once more to be the best criterion of truth, if indeed it be true that watches were not created by a "fiat," aud that their maker himself, as far as we can behold him, is, as it were, a mechanism in whose motion the measured beats of time are not found wanting.

A similar aspect is presented to us by human beliefs and opinions as to the origin of living organisms. We can trace the rise of the conception of a Creator like unto man even in material form; a Creator who creates by the sound of His voice, in a moment of time, whole orders of new beings, who moulds man out of clay and breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. In opposition to this idea, we can see a conception arising, according to which matter is slowly transforming itself by itself, by means of evolution, producing little by little all organisms up to man himself. There is, according to this theory, no longer room for the action of a Creator, who moreover, as He is represented by the positive religions, is nothing more than a God created by man in his own image and likeness, a colossal shadow of man himself thrown on the empty heavens. Finally, we see a third conception which admits the action within the universe of slow hidden forces, by means of which inorganic matter has been ascending, through myriads of centuries, to the production of the human body; a conception which acknowledges in the

lower world dim throes and premonitory flashes of the immortal spirit given to man; which, in the last place, attributes the laws of this transformation to the will of an intelligent Being whom the human soul resembles because it also can understand, and will.

In the paper which I read at the Venetian Institute, I put forward and defended what was in substance this same idea. I hope that in so doing I did not waste my learning, which was indeed abundant, ponderous and weighty. "You will see,' " has been said, not without malice and irony, by a celebrated disciple of Darwin, with regard to the new learning and the old faiths, "you will see that, some day or other, some one will come to maintain that old bottles were made on purpose for new wine." I have a great and sincere respect for Professor Huxley; but, irony and malice apart, what I really did maintain last year was practically that old bottles were made on purpose for new wine. There was, however, this slight difference in my proposition. It seemed to me that Professor Huxley's wine was not, as has been better said by others, of an entirely new quality, and for this reason, that in certain very ancient dusty bottles dregs have been found, discolored, it is true, and rather musty, but still rich in alcohol, and similar in flavor to the aforesaid wine. What I mean to say is, that I have found ideas contained in certain great and famous vessels of Catholic doctrine, of such a nature that if there was room in those vessels for them, there cannot fail to be room also for the scientific doctrine. of evolution. Since then I have tried pouring it into them, and have found that they hold it wonderfully well, and that there is even room for much similar wine from the vintages of the future.

Many people wonder that I, a writer of verses and novels, should have devoted myself to such a study. They cannot understand why, in turning to evolution, I should leave behind me Latin, theologians, metaphysics, and the Greek barbarisms of scientific terms, and should treat of it from the point of view of an artist who has a right to speak as such.