Critiques and Addresses

by Thomas Henry Huxley

But as the whole tenor of the context shows, Suarez applies this argumentation merely to the evolution of material substantial forms in the ordinary course of nature. How the substantial forms of animals and plants primarily originated, is a question to which, so far as I am able to discover, he does not so much as allude in his "Metaphysical Disputations." Nor was there any necessity that he should do so, inasmuch as he has devoted a separate treatise of considerable bulk to the discussion of all the problems which arise out of the account of the Creation which is given in the Book of Genesis. And it is a matter of wonderment to me that Mr. Mivart, who somewhat sharply reproves "Mr. Darwin and others" for not acquainting themselves with the true teachings of his Church, should allow himself to be indebted to a heretic like myself for a knowledge of the existence of that "Tractatus de opere sex Dierum," I in which the learned Father, of whom he justly speaks, as "an authority widely venerated, and whose orthodoxy has never been questioned," directly opposes all those opinions, for which Mr. Mivart claims the shelter of his authority.

In the tenth and eleventh chapters of the first book of this treatise, Suarez inquires in what sense the word "day," as employed in the first chapter of Genesis, is to be taken. He discusses the views of Philo and of Augustin on this question, and rejects them. He suggests that the approval of their allegorizing interpretations by St. Thomas Aquinas, merely arose out of St. Thomas's modesty, and his desire not to seem openly to controvert St. Augustin—"voluisse Divus Thomas pro sua modestia subterfugere vim argumenti potius quam aperte Augustinum inconstantiae arguere."

Finally, Suarez decides that the writer of Genesis meant that the term "day" should be taken in its natural sense; and he winds up the discussion with the very just and natural remark that "it is not probable that God, in inspiring Moses to write a history of the Creation which was to be believed by ordinary people, would have made him use language, the true meaning of which it is hard to discover, and still harder to believe."[1]

[Footnote 1: "Tractatus de opere sex Dierum, seu de Universi
Creatione, quatenus sex diebus perfecta esse, in libro Genesis cap. i.
refertur, et praesertim de productioue hominis in statu innocentiae."
Ed. Birckmann, 1622.]

And in chapter xii. 3, Suarez further observes:—

"Ratio enim retinendi veram significationem diei naturalis est illa communis, quod verba Scripturae non sunt ad metaphoras transferenda, nisi vel necessitas cogit, vel ex ipsa scriptura constet, et maximè in historica narratione et ad instructionem fidei pertinente: sed haec ratio non minus cogit ad intelligendum propriè dierum numerum, quam diei qualitatem, QUIA NON MINUS UNO MODO QUAM ALIO DESTRUITUR SINCERITAS, IMO ET VERITAS HISTORIAE. Secundo hoc valde confirmant alia Scripturae loca, in quibus hi sex dies tanquam veri, et inter se distincti commemorantur, ut Exod. 20 dicitur, Sex diebus operabis et facies omnia opera tua, septimo autem die Sabbatum Domini Dei tui est. Et infra: Sex enim diebus fecit Dominus caelum et terram et mare et omnia quae in eis sunt, et idem repetitur in cap. 31. In quibus locis sermonis proprietas colligi potest tum ex aequiparatione, nam cum dicitur: sex diebus operabis, propriissimè intelligitur: tum quia non est verisimile, potuisse populum intelligere verba illa in alio sensu, et è contrario incredibile est, Deum in suis praeceptis tradendis illis verbis ad populum fuisse loquutum, quibus deciperetur, falsum sensum concipiendo, si Deus non per sex veros dies opera sua fecisset."

These passages leave no doubt that this great doctor of the Catholic Church, of unchallenged authority and unspotted orthodoxy, not only declares it to be Catholic doctrine that the work of creation took place in the space of six natural days; but that he warmly repudiates, as inconsistent with our knowledge of the Divine attributes, the supposition that the language which Catholic faith requires the believer to hold that God inspired, was used in any other sense than that which He knew it would convey to the minds of those to whom it was addressed.

And I think that in this repudiation Father Suarez will have the sympathy of every man of common uprightness, to whom it is certainly "incredible" that the Almighty should have acted in a manner which He would esteem dishonest and base in a man.

But the belief that the universe was created in six natural days is hopelessly inconsistent with the doctrine of evolution, in so far as it applies to the stars and planetary bodies; and it can be made to agree with a belief in the evolution of living beings only by the supposition that the plants and animals, which are said to have been created on the third, fifth, and six days, were merely the primordial forms, or rudiments, out of which existing plants and animals have been evolved; so that, on these days, plants and animals were not created actually, but only potentially.

The latter view is that held by Mr. Mivart, who follows St. Augustin, and implies that he has the sanction of Suarez. But, in point of fact, the latter great light of orthodoxy takes no small pains to give the most explicit and direct contradiction to all such imaginations, as the following passages prove. In the first place, as regards plants, Suarez discusses the problem:—