The Origin of Man

a) The Theory of Evolution

Evolution is the popular name for the hypothetical process of development of living bodies. The theory of Evolution is called Evolutionism. More properly, this theory is called Transformism. It is a theory of development, and not of ultimate origins. Evolutionism presupposes the existence of some bodily being, some primitive mass of matter, and the mysterious infusion into this matter of the thing called life. Only when so much is taken for granted does Evolutionism offer itself as an explanation of the variety and gradation observable among living bodies. In the sixth century before Christ, Anaximander, philosopher of Miletus in ancient Ionia, proposed a doctrine of Evolutionism in his attempt to account for the world as he found it. He taught (gratuitously, and as a mere handy explanation which he could not even try to prove) that there was in the beginning a boundless mass of matter, which he conceived to be a kind of mist or spray, in which minute particles of every kind of bodily substance were held, so to speak, in solution. The elements of heat in this primitive mass exercised a drying influence which caused different things to “separate out.” Thus, under the influence of heat, the warmer particles drew off from the colder, and both were condensed. The heat elements took form as the sun and the fiery bodies of the heavens; the cold elements condensed into the earth and its waters. The sun, continuing to shed heat upon the earth, raised up bubbles on its muddy surface, and some of these broke loose and became fishes. Fishes entered the waters, but some of them were left stranded upon dry land, and developed parts and organs suitable to maintain life there, and so became animals. And from animals came other and still other animals, and finally man. This naive Anaximandrian Evolutionism is not without its defenders even to-day. But the more prominent modern evolutionary doctrines are not much concerned about the origin of life, even animal life; their chief interest and effort lies in the explanation of the development of a higher and more complex animal organism from a lower and less complex. And so, by transformation of species they account for the types of animals we find on earth today, not excluding the human animal, man. Transformation of species is a phrase which means the process by which one species of living things is thought by evolutionists to develop into another and “higher” or more complex species. And a species is a class of living things that can inter-breed indefinitely in the natural state. A species of plants is known as a botanical species and a species of animals is called a zoological species. Our interest in the present study is focussed upon the zoological species, and it is that which we shall indicate hereafter by the simple term species. Many definitions of species have been formulated, none of which appears to give general satisfaction. These definitions range from the sonorous statement of Sir William Bateson that a species is a class marked by “morphological discontinuity and interspecific sterility” to the direct and simple declaration of Professor Poulton that a species is “an interbreeding community.” The point in which all definitions of species agree is this: animals of one species are normally capable of inter-breeding indefinitely in their natural state, and they cannot inter-breed indefinitely with members of another species. In 1859, Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) published his famous work, giving it a lordly title, which is usually shortened to its first five words, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. This book was epoch-making, not in the sense that it achieved a lasting scientific triumph, but that it gave to evolutionists a new inspiration, and set a new direction for their thinking. Darwin taught that the stronger and superior individuals of any litter, or of any species of animals, manage to live, while the weaker and unfit perish. Thus there is a “struggle for life,” in which is observed a constant “survival of the fittest,” and this survival is a natural process of the triumph of strength over weakness, of competence over inferiority, and so the survival deserves the name of “natural selection.” Superior beings survive; they transmit their superiorities to their offspring; the offspring tend, as the parents did in turn, to vary in every possible direction; weak variations and varieties are stamped out; superior varieties endure, and thus we have an upward evolutionary trend. Darwin believed that man is developed, by force of natural selection, from the higher apes. While Darwin was unquestionably the most notable popularizer of the evolutionary theory in modern times, he did not propose the theory as something new, but merely offered an explanation of how the evolutionary drive or force carries on its work. Nor was he alone in the field of special theorists. Before Darwin, Jean de Lamarck (1744-1829), eminent French zoologist, had proposed a theory, not of natural selection, but of “adaptation” and “transmission of acquired characteristics.” That is to say, according to Lamarck, living things adapt themselves to their surroundings or environment, developing such parts and organs as are necessary to their survival in their situation. Thus by adaptation, animals acquire characteristics, and these are transmitted to offspring. In this way the species now present on earth came into being. All this was set forth by Lamarck in a book called, Philosophie Zodlogique, which was published in 1809, just fifty years before Darwin’s work on the origin of species startled the scientific and the scientistic worlds. Lamarckians and Darwinians had many a disagreement, and while unable to offer the world anything like convincing evidence in the matter of the evolutionary origin of species, they presented a striking proof of adaptations and variations among evolutionists. Presently they became Neo-Darwinians and Neo-Lamarckians. And then Hugo De Vries (1848-), Dutch botanist, upset both camps of “Neos” with an entirely new theory of “mutations” or “jumps” instead of steady variations and gradual adaptations in the evolutionary process. De Vries’ work, Die Mutationstheorie, appeared in 1901. To-day evolutionists, following a very businesslike method of publicity and propaganda, have pretty well convinced the lay mind that Evolution is a fact. But the fact of evolution is the only thing evolutionists agree upon. There are many theories as to the manner in which Evolution evolves, no one of which is generally accepted by scientists, and no one of which covers all the facts to be explained. Over against the evolutionary assumption of “fact” there is a growing impatience in many quarters with the arrogance of evolutionists. Mr. Arnold Lunn makes ringingly articulate the New Voice of Protest in two articles (published in The Sign, 1934) under the caption, “Is Evolution True?” He quotes many scientists, most of whom are convinced evolutionists, on the weakness of the evolutionary position. Among others he cites Yves Delage (1854-1920), noted French zoologist, who admitted that his belief in Evolution was founded rather on personal philosophical opinion than upon natural history, and wrote:

“Ik one takes one’s stand upon the exclusive ground of the facts, it must be acknowledged that the formation of one species from another species has not been demonstrated at all.” Mr. Lunn does not hesitate to sum up his scholarly investigation in these bold terms: “There is no direct and no contemporary and no historic evidence for evolution.” But the most notable thing about Mr. Lunn’s study is its disclosure of the shameful fact that evolutionists, taken generally, are not playing fair with the public in their studies and discussions. He quotes Mr. Dewar, famous contemporary scientist, who has suffered from the practice here condemned: “Those who do not accept this creed (Evolutionism) are deemed unfit to hold scientific offices; their articles are rejected by newspapers or journals; their contributions are refused by scientific societies, and publishers decline to publish their books except at the author’s expense. Thus the independents to-day are pretty effectually muzzled.” Mr. Lunn continues: “It is high time that those of us who still believe in free thought should unite against the High Priests of Evolutionary Orthodoxy and insist that this fascinating question should be freely discussed.” Mr. Dewar chooses the just expression in referring to Evolutionism as a “creed.” For indeed most evolutionists make Evolutionism their religion. They cling to it as a doctrine that must, at whatever cost, be promulgated and defended, instead of presenting it as a system that must justify itself to all the world. For Evolutionism, even in the lower orders of plants and animals, has not yet justified itself. In fact, it is farther to-day than ever from justification, and the unfair tactics of evolutionists, their artful dodging and their resentful sensitiveness, go a long way to prove it so. Consciously or unconsciously evolutionists feel the weakness of their position, and it is a position that has been so laboriously attained, and suits so well the prideful spirit which has turned much modern science into scientism, that they may fairly be said to show a willingness to do anything, fair or foul, true or false, to maintain it. Against the very thought of being dislodged from their position, evolutionists turn with a venomous resentfulness that is not unmixed with terror. They become nasty, as Mr. Julian Huxley and Mr. H. G. Wells do in The Science of Life, where they write: “There is to-day no denial of the fact of organic evolution except on the part of manifestly ignorant and prejudiced and superstitious minds.” They do not hesitate to lie, as the same authors do in the same work when they say: “Evolution is a fact as well established as the roundness of the earth”; as the “reconstructors” do when they take a thigh bone, a piece of skull-pan, and a few teeth, and turn out a Pithecanthropus, finished “down to the last detail of hair and habits.” Evolutionists preach Evolutionism as a doctrine to be taken on faith, refusing to meet the difficulties that face it as a scientific hypothesis. They insinuate the doctrine into every department of mental as well as bodily life; they make it the background of human history, of language study, of psychology, of theories of education; they use it as an attack upon the constancy of truth and the changelessness of the moral law; they even explain the concept of an infinite God as an evolutionary growth, derived from early and inferior forms of religious conception. Evolutionists spread their doctrine by means of every available vehicle of propaganda, news sheets, novels, plays, syndicated pabuluni for the groundlings in paragraphs on editorial pages and in featured articles in Sunday supplements. And so thoroughly have the propagandists done their work during the last fifteen or twenty years, that the author of a widely-used textbook in sociology, Mr. C. A. Ellwood, can frankly say: “The doctrine of descent, therefore, stands in all its essentials to-day unquestioned by men of science, and it must be assumed by the student of sociology in any attempt to explain social evolution.” In the same textbook (Sociology and Modern Social Problems, p. 35), Mr. Ellwood says: “It is evident that the student of society, jf he accepts fully the modern scientific spirit, must also assume evolution in this… universal sense.” Not all, perhaps not much, of the Evolutionpropaganda is recognized in true character by those who spread it. Many are strong in their faith, strong in the religious creed of Evolutionism, without any conscious grasp of their unscientific attitude. What ails the evolutionists of to-day is not so much a lack of sincerity, as a lack of logic. Yet, as we have seen, some of them, and not the least notable, cannot be excused from the charge of falsification of evidence. Of what a Catholic may hold in this matter of Evolution, especially as touching human origins, we shall speak in a moment. Here it will not be amiss to mention the distressing fact that some Catholic teachers and writers manifest on the point a disgusting lack of dignity. They turn “pussyfooters,” softspoken diplomatists; they move about, so to speak, with finger on lip, like the “softy soothering” undertaker in Huckleberry Finn, warning non-evolutionists of their own religion, not to speak lest they “stultify themselves” by seeming to be out of tune with the scientistic mood of the moment. They assert, with the air of men deeply learned and highly impartial, that Evolutionism is not to be brushed aside “with the wave of a hand”—as though any sane person had thought or could think of doing that! Yet’these same suave gentlemen applaud the wave of the hand, not to mention the tap on the forehead, with which the arrogant evolutionist brushes aside the solidly scientific case that stands against him. One wonders who is really “stultified” in face of the facts. There is another class of Catholic writers that calls for passing notice. These are the strainers, the compromisers, the adjusters. They expend tireless effort in explaining to Catholics how they can adjust themselves to the mood and mode of scientistic fashion. Surely, the energy of these persons is misspent. Science has suffered too much already in definition and practical expression; it might be spared the final indignity of being reduced to a kind of cheap political issue, with Catholic heelers soliciting, in its name, votes and influence for Evolutionism. “Science,” as Ruskin truly says, “does not speak until it knowsThere is no place in science for mere partisans, and no place for trimmers and compromisers. Either Evolutionism is true, or it is not true. If it is true, we want it, and wish to know all that can be known about it. If it is not true, we cannot accept it. Nor can we be driven to acceptance on the score that to certain highly imaginative people it seems to be true. Science, like Hamlet, “knows not ‘seems’ ’’; science “does not speak until it knows ” Why then should we twist and strain in the effort to go along, as far as possible, with those who are merely enthusiastic for the success of the doctrine of Evolutionism and eager for its general acceptance? Let us rather labor to know whether the doctrine be true, withholding assent until compelling evidence is brought forward. No such evidence has been produced by the evolutionist to date, and, by his own confession, none is likely to be adduced. For the evolutionist has a way of basing his argument—as Mr. Chesterton notes—on the gaps in its own evidence, pleading as a reason for Evolutionism the very absence of that geological record which would be required to prove it! Now Evolutionism may some day be proved true for all living things other than man. True or false, however, it makes not a whit of difference to the Catholic as a Catholic. The question of non-human Evolution does not touch his religion at all. If God chose to make things by a slow process of development rather than by a swift one of direct creation, it still remains true that it is God who has made things. But the Catholic knows that God has not made man by any evolutionary process. The peculiar creation of the first man and the formation of the first woman from the first man is a matter of Divine Revelation which—as the Biblical Commission pointed out in its decree of June 30, 1909-^cannot be called into doubt. And man’s soul is spiritual, a thing in its nature incapable of being produced otherwise than by direct creation in each instance. Leaving man out of the question, the Catholic may go as far “as who goes farthest” in the matter of Evolution. Of course, there is absolutely no scientific reason why he should go far, or, for the matter of that, go at all. But the whole point and purpose of the Evolution propagandist outside the Catholic Church is to establish the conviction of human Evolution in the minds of men. This the Catholic cannot accept. Nor can he sanely accept the modified form of Evolution which would admit the evolutionary production of the human body from animal ancestors, declaring that, when the body of one particular animal had been developed to sufficient perfection, God infused into this one animal a human soul, and made it into Adam, our first father. The Catholic has his faith as well as the most solidly scientific reasons to inform him that the human race is marked by solidarity, that is, by derivation of all men from a single pair of parents. The doctrine of Original Sin (which Mr. Chesterton once called “the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved”) demands this solidarity of the human race, and so also do the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Redemption. Science fully supports these doctrines, which we know, supernaturally, to be infallibly true. For human beings are one true species; human nature is the same in all men of all colors, cultures, sizes, dispositions; all men have the same bodily functions and mental processes, the same laws of generation and birth, the same facility of interbreeding; all have the same power of reasoning; all have the reasoned conviction of moral laws and values; all exhibit the same need of religious truth and practice; all have the power of speech and the talent to develop it into an expression adequate for their needs. Catholics are sometimes urged—by the adjusters and compromisers—to accept the modified Evolutionism we have described. That is to say, they are urged to profess belief in the evolution of one human body from an animal source, a body made human by the inbreathing of a human soul, a body from which the first woman was developed as spouse, and from which, through generation as we know it now, all mankind has descended. But even this somewhat fantastic concession to the evolutionists does not, in any wise, bring one into agreement with the current Evolutionism. For, to the modern evolutionist the term Evolution means human Evolution, and human Evolution means tribal Evolution, that is, the development of mankind from a number of animals, and not from one humanized male animal. Further, this tribal Evolution usually means, to modern evolutionists, the development of the whole man as we know him from animal origins, with no intervention of a Creator, and no infusion of a spiritual soul. Man, as he is to-day, is regarded by evolutionists as the latest, if not the final, fruitage of a wholly natural process of development. And indeed the part of an Evolver—that is, of a Creator and Sustainer, who started and continues the process, giving to the original materials the power and direction for their evolving—is usually ignored. To many minds the doctrine of modern Evolutionism seems to dispense with God altogether. It cannot really do so, of course. But to untrained minds it seems to do so, and this seeming is diligently fostered by the scientistic gentlemen who espouse the cause of Evolutionism and seek to make it the directive force in human thinking and the main factor in all human life. To sum up: Is Evolution true? As regards nonhuman living bodies, no one can say. To many it seems probable; to many it seems unlikely. In any case, Evolution cannot, in the present state of our information, be taken as anything more than a hypothesis; it is demonstrably not a scientific fact. As regards human Evolution, the answer is direct: Evolution is simply not true.

b) Evolution in Sociology

We have quoted from a popular textbook in sociology the amazing statement that the student of this science must assume Evolution as true if he accepts the modern scientific spirit. In plain terms, this means that if the student of sociology wishes to be in style, he must take Evolution as the basis of his science. It is hardly necessary to point out the inconsistencies and even the absurdities contained in the quoted statement. Surely, if sociology is built upon a mere assumption, and an assumption that has no more powerful argument to recommend it than the fact that it is the current fashion among scientists, then sociology has no claim whatever to the name of science. And indeed modern sociology has no justified claim to that name. The textbook quoted is typical of its kind—it is, in fact, a very conservative specimen of its kind— and gives us plain evidence of the futility of modern sociology in theory as in practice. For, as we have seen, modern sociology, in making man a purely evolutionary product of animal origin, falsifies the very nature of man. Obviously, the plans and programs of modern sociology are the outgrowth and development of its theoretical principles. And since the theoretical principles are a mere assumption, and unwarranted at that, one does not look for high value in the programs. Indeed, we may justly say that modern sociology destroys the true concept of man and then seeks to serve him in his falsified character. In doing this, modern sociology affronts the mind by its lack of logic, and renders sterile at the outset the plans and programs it offers for the furtherance of man’s lasting welfare. Evolutionism enters into the very warp and woof of the fabric of modern sociology and social service. It falsifies the whole. It appears in discussions of “social Evolution” or the evolutionary development of animal groups which “interact mentally.” It appears in the explanation of emerging intelligence and in concepts of morality; thus “the man who lies, cheats, or steals, or who indulges in other unsocial conduct, sets himself against his group and places his group at a disadvantage as compared with other groups. Natural selection operates upon groups as well as upon individuals, and so is at work in social as well as in organic evolution. The group which can command the most loyal, most efficient membership, and has the best organization, is, other things being equal, the group which survives.” The quotation is from Ellwood’s Sociology and Modern Social Problems (p. 37). Further: Evolutionism appears in modern sociology (a) in the exaggerated stress laid upon heredity as a social influence; (&) in the theoretical bug-a-boo set out in statistics about reproduction and overpopulation; (c) in the degrading of self-appreciation and of charity to the level of a cold instinct for cooperation as the necessary means to ultimate success in the struggle for existence; (ci) in the explanation of family life as the refinement of animal mating and grouping; (e) in the evolutionary interpretation of war, nationalism, government, social castes or classes, social morality, religion, groupdominance or success in politics, business, and finance. Indeed, modern sociology frankly declares that the development of society (or “social evolution”) is so completely a matter of evolutionary processes that, to quote Mr. Ellwood once more, it “rests upon and is conditioned by biological evolution at every point. There is, therefore, scarcely any sanity in sociology without the biological point of view” (p. 55). In all this, modern sociology ignores God and refuses to see man either as the child of God with a divinely bestowed dignity and destiny, or as the image of God with a character essentially superior to that of brute animals. At the very outset, therefore, the Catholic sociologist and the modern sociologist must part company. Catholic sociology does not recognize human Evolution at all; modern sociology makes human Evolution its very soul and centre. Catholic sociology gives due recognition to the influence upon human lives of heredity and environment, but it does not make these forces the controlling and compelling factors in individual or social life; Catholic sociology recognizes human free-will; it recognizes the fact that there is in a man, however fallen, the image of God, and, in consequence, an almost boundless capacity for fine and noble conduct and for self-improvement in developing or perfecting that image; Catholic sociology recognizes divine grace as a tremendous factor in human well-being, and it knows how to direct men to the fountains of that grace. Modern sociology, on the contrary, makes man the product of heredity and environment; it ignores free-will; it sees in man no image of God, for it ignores God; it knows nothing of divine grace or of how to apply it to men’s needs. In a word, modern sociology recognizes nothing in a man but inherited traits and an evolutionary drive, and nothing outside a man but the shaping forces of his surroundings. Modern sociology feels that it is not sane without the biological point of view. Now, modern sociology is not sane even with the biological point of view. For if human Evolution be taken as a fact (and that is what the “biological point of view” means), it must be taken as an inevitable fact. Its processes are not to be controlled in any final sense. To acknowledge human Evolution and then to seek ways to ditect human efforts and affairs and lives, is simply silly. If human Evolution be a fact, there is no such thing as a social problem. For man, in the hypothesis, is the victim of an inevitable and inexorable process, and nothing can be done about it. Change circumstances and environments, seek to control heredity by some process of eugenics, seek to weed out ineffective persons by some program of mutilation, prohibition, and genteel murder, and you may only halt and hamper the evolutionary force. Who could know whither the force is ultimately tending? Who could know that what now appears undesirable and burdensome in human society is not some necessary condition for a finer evolutionary fruitage later on? Ultimately the evolutionary drive must prevail. And the sociologist (who cannot know whither this drive is tending) is merely a meddler and an unscientific botcher. Advocates of evolutionary sociology stand confounded by their own doctrine.

c) The True Origin of Man

Even if we had no divinely revealed account of the creation of our first parents, even if we were to accept Evolutionism as the true doctrine of the development of living things other than man (as, perhaps, it may be), we should still be driven, by reason of the unbridged chasm of essential difference between man and brute, to conclude that man is the product of a special creation. That man has bodily resemblances to other animals is manifest; and this is quite normal too, for man is an animal. But man is also something other than animal; man is rational; man has understanding and free-will. And there is not a shred or patch of scientific evidence to suggest that any animal except man now has, or ever has had, anything comparable to understanding and freewill. Even if one should accept the modified Evolutionism which holds that the human body of the first man was developed from a brute, the mental and spiritual element in a man could not be so developed; the special creation of man as a rational being is still a truth absolutely scientific. The Catholic student is not to be distressed by the impatience or displeasure of the modern sociologist over this logical process of reasoning and this use of the term “scientific truth.” The modern sociologist likes to rule out argument and fact which deal with God or creation, as “unscientific.” This is because the modern sociologist, like the pseudo-scientists in general, has defined the terms “scientific” and “unscientific” for his own purposes, limiting their meaning arbitrarily to exclude from discussion the realities which do not lie subject to handling in a laboratory. If you allow the modern sociologist or pseudo-scientist to make up his own terms, he will invalidate your argument before you present it; that is, he will nullify its force by dodging it altogether. But it is not logical to dodge facts or valid argument; it is not sane to frame a set of terms to an arbitrary meaning and then deny the reality of what lies beyond the limits of that narrow meaning. To deny the scientific character of arguments about things supersensible (such as God, or creation, or man’s special character) because you cannot get these things into a test-tube or under a microscope, is as irrational as to deny the existence of poetry because you cannot weigh it on hay-scales. The superstition that “scientific” means “capable of laboratory demonstration,” and that nothing is of value unless it have such “scientific” backing, is growing stale; but it has been a mighty and a widespread superstition, and its influence has been a calamitous evil for the mind, notably for the school-trained mind. The true origin of man is the special creative act of God which gave man being. Man was formed, as we know from Revelation, from the slime of the earth. The modified Evolutionism which makes the first man’s body an animal product holds that the forming of man from the slime of the earth was indirect; and, of course, if the slime of the earth were modified gradually through a series of changes into an animal form, it would still be true that the final product (man’s body) is made of the slime of the earth. But the point here is that man came into being when the soul was created and joined with matter, which itself had been first created. “The Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” (Genesis ii, 7). To create is to produce without having any materials or seedlings or elements to shape into a thing. To create is to make entirely out of nothing. It is, of course, a demonstrable fact that all creatures are ultimately and formally explained only by the fact of creation. No alternative doctrine is acceptable; indeed none is thinkable, except the doctrine called Pantheism and that called Materialism, and neither can stand investigation. Pantheism makes the First Cause share its actual being with creatures, so that all things are God; and this doctrine makes finite the infinite First Cause and identifies good and evil; thus reason cannot accept it. Materialism denies the existence of non-bodily things, and so stands powerless to explain a non-contingent beginning of things contingent (for bodily things are always contingent) or to establish a First Cause which does not contradict itself by turning out to be an effect. Rejecting—as we must if we are reasonable—the doctrines of Pantheism and Materialism, we are forced to accept Creationism as the only alternative. Nor does reason dislike this requirement; it squares with rational nature as wholly reasonable, wholly acceptable, wholly consonant and consistent with the reasoned explanations of things in the universe. Thus, the statement that man has his origin in creation is a scientific statement; it is not presented as something to be taken on faith. But we stress the special creation of man, for man is essentially different from all other things in the universe, and, while he has the elements and properties of all sorts of bodily things in his make-up (chemical, mineral, vegetal, animal), he has the mental and spiritual element which is like no other thing in the world, and which raises him above all visible creation. From the first man, directly created, we know, by Revelation only, that the first woman was formed. And from these, by the generative or reproductive process as we know it now, all other men have descended. Yet human parents are not the creators of their offspring; the marvellous and mysterious formation of the child is explained by physical processes which only the Creator could establish and only the Creator can maintain. And the human soul, being a spirit, cannot be explained by any reproductive process; it is, in every instance, the direct and immediate product of God’s creative act. Nor is the soul first created and afterwards infused into its body. The doctrine of such a preexistence of the soul is theologically reprobated and philosophically unsound. The soul is created and infused at one and the same indivisible instant. Each soul (directly created by God, and in no sense derived from parents) exists at the moment of its creation in substantial union with the body, just conceived. The first moment which finds a human soul existent zvithout a body, is the moment it leaves the body when a man dies. In passing, it is interesting and profitable to notice that, while the soul is not derived from parents, human nature is so derived. The whole man, the complete human being, is born of a human mother. Thus a man takes his nature (under God) from his parents. And the original sin which affects human nature is thus transmitted to all men, unless, as in the case of the Blessed Mother, God’s power intervenes to preserve the person from contamination, or, as in the Incarnation, God Himself becomes man without process of human paternity.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have learned that the doctrine of Evolutionism or Transformism is merely a hypothesis and not at all a scientific fact. We have seen also that Evolution (even in the unlikely supposition that it should be proved even for lower lifeforms than that of man) does not touch the question of human origin and does not enter into any explanation of the nature of a man. We have noticed the lamentable fact that the inadequate (and, touching man, the demonstrably false) hypothesis of Evolution is generally accepted to-day as the true explanation of the development of all living things, including man, although it cannot pretend to explain first origins. We have seen that unscientific propaganda, and the prideful determination of men to ignore God’s place and work in His world, are the causes of this widespread and unfounded belief. We have seen that Evolution holds a central position in modern non-Catholic sociology, and we have offered a rational criticism in proof of the fact that the evolutionary assumption renders such sociology inept, sterile, and scientistic. We have learned that the true origin of man is, ultimately, God’s creation of the first parents, and, proximately, the human reproductive process together with the immediate divine creation of each individual human soul. We have noted that the pre-existence of Jiuman souls is an untenable doctrine.