Page:Carroll Lane Fenton - A History of Evolution (1922).djvu/19

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Inasmuch as almost the entire learning of Europe for several centuries was under the protection and rule of the church, it is important that we examine in some detail the fate of evolution at the hands of that organization.

The early church drew its teachings on the origin and development of life from two sources—the Book of Genesis, and the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle. The early Christian Fathers, or at least the more prominent of them, were very broad-minded in their interpretations of the "revelations" of the Bible. In the fourth century, Gregory of Nyassa began a natural interpretation of Genesis that was completed in that century, and the one following, by Augustine. Despite the plain statements of the direct, or "special" creation of all living things, to be found in Genesis, Augustine promulgated a very different doctrine. He believed that all development took place according to powers incorporated in matter by the Creator. Even the body of man himself fitted into this plan, and was therefore a product of divinely originated, but naturally accomplished development. Thus Augustine, as Moore says, "distinctly rejected Special Creation in favor of a doctrine which, without any violence to language, we may call a theory of Evolution."