re the appearance of man.

Troublesome questions also arose among theologians regarding animals
classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was especially exercised
thereby. He says: "I confess I am ignorant why mice and frogs were
created, or flies and worms.... All creatures are either useful, hurtful,
or superfluous to us.... As for the hurtful creatures, we are either
punished, or disciplined, or terrified by them, so that we may not
cherish and love this life." As to the "superfluous animals," he says,
"Although they are not necessary for our service, yet the whole design
of the universe is thereby completed and finished." Luther, who followed
St. Augustine in so many other matters, declined to follow him fully in
this. To him a fly was not merely superfluous, it was noxious--sent by
the devil to vex him when reading.

Another subject which gave rise to much searching of Scripture and long
trains of theological reasoning was the difference between the creation
of man and that of other living beings.

Great stress was laid by theologians, from St. Basil and St. Augustine
to St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, and from Luther to Wesley, on the
radical distinction indicated in Genesis, God having created man "in his
own image." What this statement meant was seen in the light of the later
biblical statement that "Adam begat Seth in his own likeness, after his
image."

In view of this and of well-known texts incorporated from older creation
legends into the Hebrew sacred books it came to be widely held that,
while man was directly moulded and fashioned separately by the Creator's
hand, the animals generally were evoked in numbers from the earth and
sea by the Creator's voice.

A question now arose naturally as to the DISTINCTIONS OF SPECIES among
animals. The vast majority of theologians agreed in representing all
animals as created "in the beginning," and named by Adam, preserved in
the ark, and continued ever afterward under exactly the same species.
This belief ripened into a dogma. Like so many other dogmas in the
Church, Catholic and Protestant, its real origins are to be found rather
in pagan philosophy than in the Christian Scriptures; it came far more
from Plato and Aristotle than from Moses and St. Paul. But this was not
considered: more and more it became necessary to believe that each
and every difference of species was impressed by the Creator "in the
beginning," and that no change had taken place or could have