Man and the Origins of Life
Windle, Bertram C. A.
122 THE COMMONWEAL December 8, 1926 |H i ii ~ i MAN AND THE ORIGINS OF LIFE By BERTRAM S THERE was a time, all will admit, when there was no such thing as llfe on this earth, the ques-...
...There is absolutely not one word of truth in it...
...His argument, which is too long to be quoted in an article of this length, should be studied in the setting of the book itself...
...Nor would that theory be a solution of our question, for regardless of where it was first born, we should still have to ask how life arose...
...Nevertheless, the scientific world is just about a unit, since the proofs brought forward by Pasteur show that no shred of evidence exists for any- thing of the kind...
...among them Canon de Dorlodot, the distinguished palaeontologist of Louvain...
...He expressed the wish to his tutor that his body should be handed over to the medical school for the purposes of dissec- tion, in order to lessen that much the horrible scenes of body-snatching which were a disgrace to the city...
...The amendment put forward by Saint Thomas held that originally the powers whereby living things emerged from matter were an endowment from the Creator...
...To begin, whether life, as we know it, exists on any other planet, or whether it could possibly survive the awful journey through the cold of space to reach our earth is beyond our present ken...
...Again, is the difference between living and not-living things one of degree or of kind...
...These organisms, on the showing of Weismann, were potentially immortal, for death is the price which we pay for having a body, as some-body puts it...
...Orthogenesis, the urge of an internal force, is an alternative explanation quite fashionable with some today, but branded as "mystical" again by others...
...He may have been right or wrong, but that is how it was...
...tion is the way some persons seem to think that, if the so-called anti-vitalistic theory were ever proved, a deadly blow would be inflicted on religion...
...But whether the first animate thing that appeared in the world received its life from Him by a C. A. WINDLE direct creative act, or through the interplay of powers or properties which He had already communicated to matter-- that is a question that she leaves perfectly open...
...That is mysticism," I suppose, will be the response...
...Turn which way you will, the Catholic explanation does not sin against science nor against common sense, as the materialistic explanation does...
...Creative impulse answers that question, and there is no other intelligible answer known to me...
...Stenson, an anatomist of great distinc- tion, was made a bishop, not, of course, on that ac-count, but it cast no shadow over his orthodoxy...
...According to the former, God by a direct act created each species separately...
...per omnes deos, te oro . . ." Patient of the dust and goad, Let the ox the pastures scent, Then, how heavy pulls the load, All his task turned punishment...
...Others, like Millikan, tell us that it never can be proved--by experiment, I take it...
...I have seen in newspapers and heard from the lips of educated men of the world, who have traveled widely, the astounding statement that Catholics are not so much as allowed to discuss the subject of evolution l Considering the number of books, de Dorlodot's for example, which have appeared on the subject bearing Catholic imprimaturs, this misconception is about the most absurd that can be imagined...
...Saint Thomas Aquinas stated long ago that the force of any cause was the greater, the further its action extended...
...Baffled in that respect, White alleged that this bull was used as a cover to prohibit the use of cadavers in the study of human anatomy...
...On the teaching of the Church I shall appeal again to the manual of Archbishop, Sheehan, which is in-tended for the use of Irish ~atholic school children and may be taken to be rigidly orthodox: The Church, while teaching as of faith that God created the living things from which all existing plants and lower animals are descended, leaves us free to hold either the theory of permanentism or the theory of theistic evolution...
...On Reading Some Lines in Horace "'Lydia, dic...
...The latter is undoubtedly the more skilful player...
...Well, have it so, but then please explain the thing un- mystically...
...Not so today, for the pendulum has taken a considerable swing...
...Nothing in the way of natural selection could well have been at work, and if there had been, it is not easy to see why it should urge the unicellular on to multicellularity...
...Whitehead most truly says "a thoroughgoing evolu-tionary philosophy is inconsistent with materialism...
...That is nonsense, for Mondini, one of the first to perform dissections, performed them in Bologna in the second decade of the century of the bull in question...
...Spontaneous generation was an acceptable thesis to many up to very recent years...
...Not much time will be spent on it, for the plausibility or the reverse of the doctrine of transformism is not to be debated here nor need we delay long over the question whether it is a theory or a proved fact...
...The curious and inexplicable thing in this connec...
...Let us imagine two billiard players, each having a hundred balls to direct...
...Now those who hold that view must tell us where this orthogenetic principle came from...
...Proved or unproved, what is the teaching of the Church in regard to the theory of transformism...
...For example, the evolutionary theory, as usually formulated, postu- lates the existence of a world of unicellular organisms at an early period...
...Is there a specific differ- ence between the sparrow and the stone...
...according to the latter, He caused some or all species to develop in course of time from one or more directly-created stocks, or from inanimate matter...
...December 8, I926 THE COMMONWEAL I23 Dozens of other similar statements could be cited from Catholic theologians, but the one given, which is official, is suffident...
...That is as far as either proof or disproof has been able to go...
...Nay, but of the heart that takes Vows and sighs their worth above-- Who has told, the morn it wakes On a world all lost for love ? HENRY LONGAN STUART...
...and there are still those who think that this form of genesis may be going on all around us, undetected...
...Some hold the latter...
...What did...
...Subsequently many papal physicians and surgeons were also anatomists and published their writings on the subject under the very noses of suc-cessive Popes...
...A charge drawn up by White which proclaimed that the Church had done deadly injury to the cause of learning by strictly forbidding the dissection of the human body, was based by him on a bull of Pope Boniface VIII of I3oo...
...Qod does not interfere directly in the natural order where He can work through natural causes...
...When a young man of most holy life studying law at Padua, he was so near unto death as to have received the last sacraments...
...Avicenna, the Arabian commen-tator on Aristotle, who differed on this point from Saint Thomas, declared---after the materialistic method that living came from not-living matter by the mere operation of natural laws...
...If well-trained scientists--Millikan is not the only one-- persist in contradicting a thesis, then that thesis cannot be said to be proved in any accurate sense of the word...
...He recovered and in making the speech of laudation conferring on him of the doctorate, Panciroli, his pro- fessor, alluded thus to the occurrence: "Humane, charitable, compassionate, even to the length of be-queathing your body to the public welfare when you saw yoursel~: at the gates of death...
...Some very distinguished men have suggested that the first living germs may have sifted down to earth from some other planet, just as cocoanuts washed up on a newly risen coral island take root there...
...I quote from the manual of Archbishop Sheehan: The Church teaches that life as well as every other form of activity must be traced to ~ as its ultimate source, and as the fount and well-head of created being with all its modifications...
...The question of the origin of life leads to that much debated subject--evolution, or transformation, which is a much better name...
...Walsh has shown that the bull in question did nothing of the kind, for it re- lated entirely to a custom which had grown up during the Crusades...
...The one needs a hundred strokes in order to accomplish his end...
...The Catholic would go further and agree (with Boodin) that "of all philosophies, materialism makes the greatest demands upon man's credulity," and that the most satisfactory explanation is the one which de- clares that life in one way or the other came into existence at the will of the Creator, which physical science is certainly incapable of disproving...
...Take one further incident, from the life of Saint Francis de Sales...
...The Pope thought it was an un- seemly method and forbade it...
...To anyone sincerely desiring to probe matters to the bottom who is not afflicted with what Father Wasmann, S.J., a most distinguished biologist and theistic evolutionist, calls "theophobia," the Catholic doctrine above enunciated will prove to be the only full and satisfying answer...
...A recent work, entitled Reflective Thinking, very properly argues that evolution is not self-explanatory...
...In the time of Saint Thomas, everybody believed that life did originate directly from not-living matter, i.e., in spontaneous generation, yet no one found his faith upset in any way by that belief...
...She allows us full freedom to choose between these alternatives as scientific evidence may direct...
...The aboriginal stuff, or material from which a mater- ialistic philosophy starts, is incapable of evolution...
...the other, with one stroke, sets all the bails in motion, as he will...
...Nothing could be more distant from the truth...
...Father Weismann, S.J., a man of science who is also a member of a strict relig- ious order, shall end this discussion: If we assume that God is the creator of all things, and that the world created by Him had evolved independently and automatically, we have actually a greater idea of God than if we regard Him as constantly interfering with the work- ing of the laws of nature...
...According to this view, the evolution of the organic world is but a little line in the book of the evolution of the whole universe, on the title-page of which still stands, written in indelible letters: "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth...
...It was not easy in those days to embalm or otherwise preserve bodies and the custom grew up of boiling off the flesh, and taking the bones along home...
...Thirty or forty years ago, many scien- tists would have answered that biological difference is only one of degree and that everything in life could be explained by chemistry and physics...
...The Church condemns as contrary to faith the theory of mater- ialistic or atheistic .evolution held by Haeckel and others, which denies or ignores the existence of a personal God, and claims that life in all its forms has developed under the operation of blind forces or causes...
...Crusaders, like other persons, had a fancy for being buried near their own homes, and comrades would promise, in the event of their death, to see that this was done...
...122 THE COMMONWEAL December 8, 1926 |H i ii ~ i MAN AND THE ORIGINS OF LIFE By BERTRAM S THERE was a time, all will admit, when there was no such thing as llfe on this earth, the question arises: Where did that life come from...
...This is by no means a new principle, but a very old one, and it shows that the theory of evolution, as a scientific hypothesis and theory, as far as it can be proved, is perfectly compatible with the Christian theory of the orlg/n of things...
...And the ap- proved teaching today is the same...
...Is biology a separate science or is it only a branch of chemistry and physics...
Vol. 5 • December 1926 • No. 5
