terly Reviewer or not.

The Reviewer declares that Mr. Darwin has, "with needless opposition,
set at nought the first principles of both philosophy and religion"
(p. 90).

It looks, at first, as if this meant, that Mr. Darwin's views being
false, the opposition to "religion" which flows from them must be
needless. But I suspect this is not the right view of the meaning of
the passage, as Mr. Mivart, from whom the Quarterly Reviewer plainly
draws so much inspiration, tells us that "the consequences which have
been drawn from evolution, whether exclusively Darwinian or not, to
the prejudice of religion, by no means follow from it, and are in fact
illegitimate" (p. 5).

I may assume, then, that the Quarterly Reviewer and Mr. Mivart admit
that there is no necessary opposition between "evolution, whether
exclusively Darwinian or not," and religion. But then, what do they
mean by this last much-abused term? On this point the Quarterly
Reviewer is silent. Mr. Mivart, on the contrary, is perfectly
explicit, and the whole tenor of his remarks leaves no doubt that by
"religion" he means theology; and by theology, that particular variety
of the great Proteus, which is expounded by the doctors of the Roman
Catholic Church, and held by the members of that religious community
to be the sole form of absolute truth and of saving faith.

According to Mr. Mivart, the greatest and most orthodox authorities
upon matters of Catholic doctrine agree in distinctly asserting
"derivative creation" or evolution; "and thus their teachings
harmonize with all that modern science can possibly require" (p. 305).

I confess that this bold assertion interested me more than anything
else in Mr. Mivart's book. What little knowledge I possessed of
Catholic doctrine, and of the influence exerted by Catholic authority
in former times, had not led me to expect that modern science was
likely to find a warm welcome within the pale of the greatest and most
consistent of theological organizations.

And my astonishment reached its climax when I found Mr. Mivart citing
Father Suarez as his chief witness in favour of the scientific freedom
enjoyed by Catholics--the popular repute of that learned theologian
and subtle casuist not being such as to make his works a likely place
of refuge for liberality of thought. But in these days, when Judas
Iscariot and Robespierre, Henry VIII. and Catiline, have all been
shown to be men of admirable virtue, far in advance of