Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/865

Rh

PON another page of the present number will be found an interesting article by an eminent Catholic theologian, the Rev. J. A. Zahm, C. S. C, under the title of Evolution and Teleology. The point of view which the writer takes up is not one that we can share; but he states his case with candor and ability, and we hold that views so stated are entitled to expression in a periodical which stands, and has always stood, for the freest discussion of all scientific and philosophical questions.

It will be observed that Father Zahm is prepared to make, and very frankly makes, large concessions to modern science. He considers that the doctrine of evolution in its general aspect may be considered as proved. As to what Huxley has called the Miltonic doctrine of creation, he says that "all the conclusions of contemporary science render it not only in the highest degree improbable, but also exhibit it as completely discredited, and as unworthy of the slightest consideration as a working hypothesis to guide the investigator in the study of Nature and Nature's laws." He admits further that, in the-light of the Darwinian theory, the reasonings which satisfied our fathers on the subject of design in Nature have become to a large extent obsolete. The authors of the Bridgewater Treatises, excellent observers of Nature as they were, regarded the adaptation of a given organism to its environment as the result of direct purposive action on the part of the Creator, entirely analogous to the action whereby a locksmith fits a key to a lock. From the modern point of view adaptation is simply the necessary condition of existence. Given a geometrical rate of increase in vegetable and animal forms, and the sifting or selective action of the environment will do the rest.

Father Zahm accepts the modern point of view, but does not on that account abandon the idea of design. He quotes certain modern writers, among whom he erroneously includes Huxley, as saying that the teachings of Darwin have simply rendered necessary a restatement of the former argument. Instead of regarding each form of life as miraculously adapted to its environment in the act of creation, we are to consider that the evolutionary process was designed to develop just such forms of life as we now see. A certain Professor Schiller is quoted as maintaining that "once we adopt the evolutionist standpoint, the argument from design is materially and perceptibly strengthened," and that in two ways: positively, by letting us behind the scenes and showing us how effects are produced; and negatively, by removing the necessity for proclaiming everything perfect, seeing that some things, if not all, may properly be considered as only in course of being made perfect. Inasmuch as the view of creation which Huxley, to avoid offense, called Miltonic is really the view which accepts in a plain sense the plain teachings of the book of Genesis, and as that view involves the perfection of all things as they came from the hands of the Creator, who pronounced them "very good," it is evident that Father Zahm adopts a standpoint far in advance of the literalism of popular theology. He recognizes that these matters