Fr. John Hardon: Origin and Nature of Man

From The Catholic Catechism: A Contemporary Catechism of the Teachings of the Catholic Church (1981)
By John A. Hardon, S.J.

Origin and Nature of Man

The history of Christian thought is not a straight line, but a waving curve, as the mysteries of faith move through time and adjust themselves (without collision) to new discoveries and ideas created by the human mind. Man’s origin and his nature are classic examples of such an adjustment without compromise of the known data of revelation.

Body of the First Man. Until modern times there were two principal areas of controversy about the origin of Adam’s body. One theory required angelic co-operation in the process; the other discussed the question of how precisely God formed the body of the first man, whether in an instant or progressively through different stages of development.

Mentioning the above is important because it clarifies what may still be unknown to some, that the theory of evolution is an ancient one in Catholic theological circles. Charles Darwin (1809-82) undoubtedly sparked a new era in anthropology and allied sciences, but Darwinism as such has only a minimal impact on Catholic thought, whereas it struck many believers in evangelical Protestantism like a tornado. The issue raised by latter-day evolutionists directly affected the interpretation of the Bible, notably the first three chapters of Genesis. Christians who had only the biblical texts as their guide, and no extrabiblical tradition or less an authoritative Church, were left with only the literal words of Scripture. It was not enough to cope with the rising tide of criticism from scientific quarters, which made the simple narrative of Genesis look like another cosmological myth.

The First Vatican Council made sure that total evolutionism, which included an evolving go, was condemned as only a more subtle form of pantheism. When it came to define man’s origin, it merely repeated what had been declared six centuries earlier against the resurgent Manichaeism of the Albigensians, namely that, after having made the angelic and material world, God “formed the creature man, who in a way belongs to both orders, as he is composed of spirit and body. [32]

There the subject still stands, doctrinally, except for two interventions by Pius XII generated by the controversy among Catholic theologians about the evolution of man’s body. The first declaration was made in 1941, when the Pope identified three “elements [that] must be retained as certainly attested by the sacred author [of Genesis], without any possibility of allegorical interpretation.”[33] These are:

1. The essential superiority of man in relation to other animals, by reason of his spiritual soul.

2. The derivation in some way of the first woman from the first man.

3. The impossibility that the immediate father or progenitor of man could have been the son of an animal, generated by the latter in the proper sense of the term. In context, the statement reads, “Only from a man can another man descend, whom he can call father and progenitor.”[34]  On other questions concerning the origin of man, the Pontiff said, we must wait for more light from science, illumined and guided by revelation. The “other questions” still open for development include the degree in which a lower species may have co-operated in the formation of the first man, the way in which Eve was formed from Adam, and the age of the human race.

Ten years later, faced with rise of scientism and historicism, the Holy See expressed itself at length on the controversial subject of evolution. This was the first time in the Church’s history that papal authority entered at such length into the issue. It highlighted the growing tension between the findings and speculations of the natural sciences and the presuppositions of faith.

“The magisterium of the Church does not forbid that the theory of evolution concerning the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that human souls are immediately created by God—be investigated and discussed by experts as far as the present state of human science and sacred theology allow.

“However, this must be done in such a way that the arguments on both sides, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary gravity, moderation and discretion. And let all be prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of safeguarding the dogmas of faith.

“On the other hand, those go too far and transgress this liberty of discussion who act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already fully demonstrated by the facts discovered up to now and by the reasoning on them, and as if there nothing in the sources of revelation which demands the greatest reserve and caution in this controversy.”[35]

What is the position of Genesis on evolution? In the first narrative of human creation, the sacred author clearly excludes materialistic evolution, as though the soul of man derived naturally from the body. But nothing is directly affirmed as to how the body of Adam was formed. The second creation text about Adam, although very anthropomorphic, is too detailed and contrasts too strongly with the origin of other creatures (below man) not to imply that God acted in a special way when he brought the body of the first man into being.

Before modern evolutionary theories were in vogue, the ancient Fathers and later Doctors of the Church, along with theologians, held that some special action of God was operative in the formation of the first man’s body; this was distinct from the ordinary co-operation of the First Cause with the physical causes built into nature. Only two main questions were raised prior to modern evolutionism: whether and to what extent God used above natural agencies, like angelic, in the formation of Adam’s body; and whether the “dust from the soil” of Genesis implied a body divinely prepared beforehand to receive a rational soul before actual infusion, or whether the body was predisposed for receiving a spirit in the very act when God “breathed into his nostrils a breath of life and man became a living being" (Gn. 2:7).

But since the theories of evolution have been popularized, theologians have come to agree that transformism, or the evolution of the first man’s body from a lower species, is compatible with the faith. Two provisos are added, however: that the soul was immediately created by God out of nothing, and that somehow God exercised a special providence over whatever process preceded the origin of man’s body, so that the first man was not literally generated by a brute beast.

Evolutionary Theories. In view of the widespread evolutionary attitude in modern thought, and its impact on the Christian faith, something should be said to clarify this posture and place it into theological perspective. Deriving as it does from experiment and reflection, evolution is one of the main sources of apparent conflict between faith and reason about which the First Vatican Council made a memorable declaration:

“Although faith is above reason, yet there can never be any real disagreement between faith and reason, because it is the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith, and has put the light of reason into the human soul. Now God cannot deny himself any more than the truth can ever contradict the truth.

“However, the chief source of this apparent contradiction lies in the fact that dogmas of faith have not been understood and explained according to the mind of the Church, or that deceptive assertions of opinions are accepted as axioms of reason. Therefore, “We define that every assertion opposed to the enlightened truth of faith is entirely false.”

Anyone familiar with the trends of current thought recognizes the need for transparency in this matter of evolution, at the risk of either professing an unenlightened faith or of making unfounded assertions of reason in opposition to the faith.

We may summarily divide evolutionary theories into three categories: those dealing with the origin of the inanimate universe, those referring to the origin of organic life apart from man, and those concerned with the origin of man.

1. For the cosmogonist, there are numerous tentative explanations of how the elements of the material universe came into being. All of them postulate the pre-existence of some kind of material substance out of which, on evolutionary grounds, ever more complex substances evolved. The two most commonly held are the “big bang” and the stellar formation theories. According to the first hypothesis, the elements were formed when some of the neutrons (infinitesimally small uncharged particles), which then captured the remaining neutrons to form the heavier elements. This was to have taken place in the first half hour of the universe. According to the second hypothesis, the formation of the elements came about by a synthesis caused by nuclear reactions in the stars that had already been formed.

If one postulates an evolution of the elements, it generally implies the evolution of the stars and galaxies. Galaxies are composed of numerous stars, and stars change in their energy content by radiation. Some lose mass, some burn out, some undergo fission into two or three stars, some capture meteors, but they all lose mass and available energy by what is now called the universal law of entropy. Thus the cosmic energy from the stellar regions (including our sun) is “burning out” in the sense that there is an increase of unavailable energy in the universe.

Some scientists have speculated, on admittedly slight evidence, that this “burning out” of the universe is partly balanced by the formation of new stars out of a gas and dust and the explosive transformation of unstable stellar bodies. In either case, “evolution” means the only the continuous natural history of stellar bodies.

The origin of planets, including the earth, also has a variety of hypothetical explanations, but with one factor in common: The planets are derivatives from the stars. It is fairly agreed that the earth and the other planets are about four and a half billion years old, the age of samples of moon rock brought back to the earth. The oldest rocks on earth are estimated at a billions years below that figure.

2. About the origin of life there have been as many theories as about the beginnings of the universe. One is superseded by another. The case for spontaneous generation came to a dramatic close with the experiments of Louis Pasteur (1822-95). The cosmozoic theory claims that life existed from the beginning as minute spores, which were transported throughout the cosmos by way of meteorites. But the intense heat and cold in outer space make it virtually impossible that such spores could survive. The virus theory is based on the paradoxical nature of viruses, which have a simple chemical composition and no not respire; but they can reproduce and metabolize when joined with the host organism upon which they act as parasites. Some therefore argued that the virus must be at an advanced stage in the development of life because it depends on a living organism for its “life” as a parasite and cannot be at the beginning of the process of life’s origins. But most scholars, while agreeing that the virus is a unique combination of life and nonlife, concede that this is more of a description of what now strangely exists than of how life originally came into being.

The most commonly held theory among evolutionists is some form of biopoesis (from the Greek bios [life] and poiein [to make]). It was given prominence by the discovery that certain nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) appear to be the key materials in all terrestrial forms of life. Yet this too is recognized by research scientists to be most hypothetical, as reported to the Darwin Centennial Celebration, by comparison with the mounting evidence in favor of organic evolution below the human species.[37]

3. The origin of man in the evolutionary scheme must be immediately distinguished between two very different theories. One theory among scientists holds that the accumulating evidence for the evolutionary process of plant and animal life has also played its role in the origin of man from the physical or bodily side of his nature. But this theory insists there is equally strong evidence that man’s psychological; side, his mind and free will, is something new, unique, and of a different order than the products of the evolutionary process.

Another theory believes that the whole of man evolved by a process totally within nature, from the lower-animal organisms. Swept along by the converging arguments which suggest that man’s physical being is part of the ongoing development of life, those who favor this hypothesis rest their case with Darwin on some variant of his own confession of a difficulty and assertion of an unprovable claim.

“The high standard of our intellectual powers, and moral disposition is the greatest difficulty which presents itself, after we have been driven to this conclusion on the origin of man.

“But everyone who admits the principle of evolution must see that the mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of man, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement.”[38]

Certainly if we apply, as an axiom of philosophy, the theory of evolution to everything, then it is only a logical deduction that man’s body and soul evolved (in Darwin’s words) “from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arborial in its habits.”[39]  But even scientific data from cultural anthropology do not support the theory. They rather indicate that man was man, and not a mere animal, from the earliest known archaeological remains that we have. He was capable of thought and had volitional powers completely unlike the pure animal instincts of the irrational species. The bridge between man and animal cannot be crossed by factual evidence. It can only be spanned by evolutionism, which denies that spirit is essentially distinct from matter and must be uniquely created by God.

Unity of the Human Race. Evolutionary thinking has also influenced the attitude toward unitary origin of the present human race from a single man. There had been scattered speculation in past centuries, like the theory that people had existed before Adam. Present-day human beings are the offspring of these pre-Adamites. But concerted challenges did not arise until Darwinism had taken root in Western thought. Polygenists, as they are called, believe that an evolutionary hypothesis of man’s origin requires the parallel belief that transition from the animal to the human body was accomplished not in one man and one woman, but in many.

As must seem immediately clear, there is more at stake than a mere question of historical fact, whether the human race actually descended from one man by natural generation. Nor is the Church concerned to prove anything from paleontology or other scientific data. It is to safeguard certain principles of revealed doctrine.       

Thus if we are commonly descended from our first parents, we are brothers and sisters in the flesh, with consequences that affect human relations on every level of society. And in spite of numerous differences, we not only share the same human nature but are literally bound together by ties of blood, which our native instinct, elevated by grace, makes the basis of social justice and charity.

This in turn lays the ground for the supernatural kinship of spirit, which finds expression in the Mystical Body, where grace sublimates the natural bond of the human family by raising it to communion with God under the headship of Jesus Christ.

From still another point of view, our common descent from Adam affects and explains our inheritance of original sin. It is just because we are naturally the offspring of the first man who sinned that, what he contracted, we receive by paternal generation. Conversely, even as we inherit sin from the father of mankind in the flesh, we are redeemed by the passion and death of Christ because he, too, was a descendant of Adam. The human nature that Christ assumed was not by carnal intercourse, but through Mary it was truly human and therefore like to Adam’s and ours in all things but sin. Christ could therefore redeem what Adam had lost, because as man he was grafted into the same human tree, which had become infected by sin.

“Sin entered the world through one man, and through sin death. . . . Adam prefigured the One to come, but the gift itself outweighed the fall. If it is certain that through one man’s fall so many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. . . . Again as one man’s fall brought condemnation on everyone, so the good act of one man brings everyone life and makes them justified. As by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rm. 5:12, 15, 18-19).

When speculation about man’s evolutionary origins reached a peak in the midtwentieth century, Pius XII reminded scholars that theorizing about the descent of man’s body from primates was one thing, but questioning whether the first parent of mankind was a single person is something else:

“As regards another theory, however, namely so-called Polygenism, sons of the Church by no means enjoy the same liberty. No Catholic can hold that after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from the first parent of all, or that Adam was merely a symbol for a number of first parents. For it is unintelligible how such an opinion can be squared with what the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the magisterium of the Church teach on original sin, which proceeds from sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, passed on to all by way of generation, is in everyone as his own”[40]

As a matter of historical record, the possibility of evolution of man’s body was put forth already in the patristic age; so that evolution properly understood is not a modern innovation. According to Gregory of Nyssa, commenting on Genesis, when “Scripture says that man arose last of all the animated beings,” it “is simply giving us a philosophical lesson about souls, seeing the most complete perfection realized in the beings formed last of all, because of a certain necessary succession of order.” We are thus being taught that “nature is elevated by degrees as it were, that is through the varieties of life from the lower stages up to the perfect.”[41] There are similar passages in Augustine to the effect that “Adam was made from the earth, but in such a way that in the making, and the growth through the ages, the same periods of time would have been occupied which we now see required by the nature of the human species.”[42] Augustine personally favored the idea that Adam came into the world at once in full maturity, but Augustine left quite open the theory that Adam’s body could have been the end effect of a long process similar (on a large scale to the development of an embryo in the womb.[43]

Yet Augustine recognized the datum of revelation about the reality and not the mere symbolism, and the oneness, and not plurality, of the first ancestor of the human family. This suggests that the real irritant regarding the origin of man is not so much Monogenism or Polygenism. It is the mystery of original sin.

(pp. 91-99)

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Endnotes

32. Fourth Lateran Council, On the Catholic Faith: Denzinger 428 (800); First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, 1: Denzinger 1783 (3002).
33. Pius XII, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Nov. 30, 1941): Pius XII, encyclical Humani Generis: Denzinger 2327 (3896).
34. Pius XII, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Nov. 30, 1941).
35. Pius XII, encyclical Humani Generis: Denzinger 2327 (3896). 
36. First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, 4: Denzinger 1797 (3017)
37. Evolution After Darwin, ed. Sol Tax (University of Chicago Press, 1960, Vol. I, 45.
38. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, III, 2.
39. Ibid.
40.  Pius XII, encyclical Humani Generis: Denzinger  2328 (3897).
41. St. Gregory of Nyssa, De Opificio Hominis, 8.
42. St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram, VI, 8.   

43. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, II, passim.

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One can read more regarding what Fr. Hardon says on evolution, and many other topics, by searching the Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives

Étienne Gilson: "From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again"

Recommended reading: From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution, by Étienne Gilson.

From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again:
A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution,
by Étienne Gilson

“THE object of the present essay is not to make final causality a scientific notion, which it is not, but to show that it is a philosophical inevitability and, consequently a constant of biophilosophy, or philosophy of life. It is not, then, a question of theology. If there is teleology in nature, the theologian has the right to rely on this fact in order to draw from it the consequences which, in his eyes, proceed from it concerning the existence of God. But the existence of teleology in the universe is the object of a properly philosophical reflection, which has no other goal than to confirm or invalidate the reality of it. The present work will be concerned with nothing else: reason interpreting sensible experience—does it or does it not conclude to the existence of teleology in nature?” ─ Étienne Gilson

“GILSON shows us that those who glibly suppose that modern biology has refuted Aristotle's doctrine of final causality do not properly understand either. The reprinting of this classic will, we can hope, contribute to the long-overdue revival of the philosophy of nature as an active field of study.”
─ Edward Feser, author of The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.

From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again is available at Amazon and Ignatius Press.

Brother Benignus: The Evolutionary Hypothesis

Excerpt from Nature, Knowledge and God: An Introduction to Thomistic Philosophy, Ch. XXI. (1947)
By Brother Benignus, F.S.C., Ph.D.


The Evolutionary Hypothesis
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THE view of nature upon which the argument now in question is based is the evolutionary view. According to this view, the original living things on the earth developed from non-living matter, and all the variety of living things which have ever existed on the earth developed from these original ones. Thomistic philosophy offers no theoretical objection to this hypothesis [emphasis added]; and whether the hypothesis represents a fact is a question for natural science to answer. Let us, therefore, accept it now hypothetically in order to see where it leads us in reference to the question of whether there is purposive design in nature.

Let us suppose, then that living beings of some very simple sort – say, unicellular or even sub-cellular organisms – originally evolved from non-living matter, and that all subsequent forms of biological life have evolved, through many intermediate stages, from these first simple forms of life. The forms of life which now exist as relatively permanent types are those which, because of their kind of structure, found a way of fitting into the environment which nature supplied. They, the survivors, were not specially produced; they were simply some forms among innumerable forms impartially produced; but, by accident of a structure that jibed both within itself and with the world around it, they were kept alive while less lucky forms were destroyed. Even these survivors do not really survive; that is, they do not for any very long time, remain unchanged. They are, in fact, changing in every generation, perhaps in ways so slight as to be imperceptible, perhaps by some sudden perceptible development or mutation; in any case, their offspring are never exactly the same as they. Some of the offspring change in a lucky way; that is, they differ from their parents by having some new structure that is better adapted to their surroundings. Some others change in an unlucky direction and fit less well into their surroundings. More of the former will live long enough to produce offspring themselves, so that the whole family tree will grow faster and bigger in the direction of its more fortunate branch, until the changes in that direction become so emphasized that we call some later generation of offspring a new species. Thus the present species of plants and animals in the world have come to be what they are.

What does it all mean? Why have some of the simple living forms remained simple. Why have some developed into highly complex organisms. Why have some become plants and some animals? Were the cells which began each of these lines of evolution different from one another, or were they the same? If they were the same what caused their later differentiation? The probable answer to all these questions is environmental conditions and gene mutations. That answer explains hardly anything, but it leads to some fertile reflections concerning the emergence of the various forms of life. If the environment is the external condition of the forms of living of living beings, the internal conditions must be sought in the stuff which becomes the various forms. The cell which resists death by dividing and by becoming a multicellular organism, the cell which provides, as it were, for future contingencies by gene mutations, must have in it some mighty urge to live. The original simple forms of life, pursued their long road of self-differentiation because it was the only alternative to death; they had to evolve or die. That they have not died, that they have filled the earth with countless kinds of life, is evidence if the unthinkably rich potentiality for life which was originally locked away in them, and which the struggle to live has brought to actuality in so many different channels. Like June, nature’s urge to live keeps “bustin’ out all over”; life tries everything in order to avoid extinction.

Matter Is Urge to Live
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But what of life’s beginning? On the hypothesis which we have adopted, living things originally evolved from non-living matter. We must, consequently, locate the “urge to live” in matter itself. But can the non-living have an urge to live? It must have, for surely a becoming alive is as strongly indicative of an urge to live as is a fighting to stay alive. Then it is in matter itself that the urge to live resides. What is matter? Today the usual answer is that matter is energy; modern physics thinks in images of force and activity, rather than in images of bulk and chunk. Units of electrical charge have replaced solid particles of stuff. Every form of matter is some form of energy, and primary matter is indeterminate energy. And out of this matter or energy all living organisms have evolved. Perhaps, then, energy or matter is fundamentally, “urge to live.” However strange this may sound, it is, not un-Thomistic. St. Thomas called it matter’s appetite for the most perfect actuality attainable: 

"But since, as was already stated, everything which undergoes motion tends as such toward a divine likeness in order to be perfect in itself, and since a thing is perfect in so far as it becomes actual, it follows that the intention of everything that is in potentiality is to tend to actuality by way of movement. Hence the more final and more perfect an act is the more is the appetite of matter inclined to it. Therefore the appetite whereby matter seeks form must tend toward the last and most perfect act to which matter can attain, as to the ultimate end of generation. Now certain grades are to be found in the acts of forms. For primary matter is in potentiality, first of all, to the elemental form. While under the elemental form, it is in potentiality to the form of a compound. Considered under the form of a compound, it is in potentiality to a vegetative soul; for the act of such a body is a soul. Again the vegetative soul is in potentiality to the sensitive, and the sensitive to the intellective. This is shown in the process of generation, for first in the generation is the fetus living a plant life, afterwards the life of an animal, and finally the life of man. After this no later or more noble form is to be found in things that are generated and corrupted. Therefore, the last end of all generation is the human soul, and to this does matter tend as to its ultimate form. Consequently the elements are for the sake of the compounds, the compounds for the sake of living things; and of these, plants are for the sake of animals, and animals for the sake of man. Therefore, man is the end of all generation." (Summa Contra Gentiles, III, 22.)

St. Thomas in the above passage, is not teaching evolution in the modern sense of that term, but someone coming upon the passage out of its context might well believe it to be an effort to indicate a metaphysical ground for the evolutionary process. The Angelic Doctor is teaching something that is very relevant to the problem of evolution, something which makes evolution intelligible. What he is teaching is that primary matter is appetite or urge to live and ultimately to live on the highest possible level, that is to say, as the body of man. The clear implication of this is that the first cause of the processes through which matter passes in its evolution is the end of those processes.

If, therefore, we could ask St. Thomas why matter becomes alive, he might answer: because matter is urge to live; life is the end of matter. From inorganic matter in the universe there was somehow produced living matter in at least this part of the universe, and, ever since, life has fought strenuously and successfully to keep itself in being and to attain higher levels. In order to succeed, it had to adopt a million forms whose variety staggers the imagination; but succeed it did. If, now, we ask natural science why matter became alive, only one answer can be given: it had to. Any other answer would amount to a rejection of chemistry and physics. And the answer is the same if we ask why life evolved to its present variety of forms: it had to. St. Thomas’ answer and the answer of science are in no way in conflict or disagreement; indeed, they amount to the same thing, although each states that thing from a different point of view. As always, the philosopher speaks from the point of view of action and scientist from the point of view of process. The evolution of matter is a series of actions determined by the ultimate act which is their end; it is also a series of mechanical processes produced by the series of actions. The series of processes is necessary if the series of actions is to take place and attain its end. If matter is urge to live, it must go through the evolutionary process. If it must go through the process, it is urge to live. But if matter is urge to live, should not all matter become alive? No. The scientist, speaking in terms of process, will answer that all matter cannot possibly come alive in the present order of nature, because inorganic nature supplies the conditions for life. The teleologist, speaking in terms of ends and actions, will give what amounts to the same answer: All matter does not come alive because the urge to live is not suicidal; the end of nature determines means to its own attainment, it does not swallow up its means and destroy itself. The means which nature provides in order to attain its end are the physico-chemical processes which science studies; and nature is so ordered that these processes culminate not only in life, the end of nature, but also in the inorganic conditions of life, the means to that end. In brief, mechanical and final causality are reciprocal in nature; that is the consistent Aristotelian-Thomistic position.

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Maritain — Substantial Forms and Evolution

"Substantial Forms and Evolution"
From The Range of Reason, Chap IV
By Jacques Maritain

WITH REGARD TO the third specific issue — substantial forms and finality — we may wonder whether any vindication of substance, substantial form and finality, however persuasive in itself it may be, can really convince a Pragmatist thinker. For the latter is indeed diposed to admit that we have signposts "telling us what behavior we may expect of things" and "enabling us to adjust successfully to the things that behave." But precisely the "behavior" that substance and substantial form lead us to expect and enable us to adjust ourselves to, is, if I may say so, the intelligible behavior, the very intelligibility of things insofar as their reality is analyzed in terms of being and resolved into the root intelligibility of being; whereas the behavior to which the Pragmatist philosopher is eager to adjust himself is the sense-perceivable behavior of things analyzed in terms of becoming and inter-activity, and resolved in the observability and measurability of "scientific" phenomena.

In the same way, finality, as Doctor Sheldon rightly observes, is the primary reason for becoming, and the deepest stimulus in the drama of the universal process, but I doubt whether we can realize this if we philosophize on the level of the empirico-mathematical explanation of phenomena and not on the level of metaphysics' abstractive intuition. And finality implies that the process tends toward an "end," toward a point where there is no longer any motion, but only repose and possession, so that the universal process and dynamism which permeates the cosmos and which carries along, so to speak, each agent beyond its own particular ends, making creation groan after its accomplishment, has its ultimate reason in the transcendent finality by virtue of which He Who is the self-subsisting Being is desired and loved by every being more than itself. Would such a view be acceptable to Pragmatist philosophy?

On the other hand, whereas I believe that it is perfectly right to emphasize the need for Thomistic philosophy, in the various phases of its conceptualization, to give greater scope to the general idea of dynamism and evolution — the real conquest of modern thought — and to deepen in this connection the traditional notion of substantial form, I think, nevertheless, that such statements should be further developed in order to remain true.

Substance is not a static inert substratum; it is the first root of a thing's activities and, while remaining the same as to its substantial being, it ceaselessly acts and changes — through its accidents, which are an expansion of itself into another, non-substantial, dimension of being. But as substance it does not change. As long as a material substance is not "corrupted" and transformed into another, it is immutable in its metaphysical — merely intelligible and non- experiential — reality of substance. Man's nature, while keeping its fixed specific determination, owing to a substantial form which is spiritual and subsisting, is, of course, capable of an endless increase of knowledge and intellectual achievement — this is the privilege of reason. But the root power and natural strength of the human intellect are not able to go beyond the capacities of reason and to pass into the degree of intellectuality of the least of the angels.

I am convinced that the hylomorphic theory involves no incompatibility with the discoveries of modern physics; and the suggestion that "the Scholastic should lay more stress on recent physics and less on chemistry" seems to me highly commendable. Surely, as Doctor Sheldon writes, "it would present his Thomistic cosmology in a fairer light, bringing out its power of adaptation and progressive character." Nevertheless, I should like to point out that it would be illusory to seek a verification of the hylomorphic theory in modern physics, for the one and the other are at work on different levels of thought, and the entities constructed by the physico-mathematical explanation of matter involve a great deal of symbolization: they sound like entia rationis grounded in the nature of things rather than like ontological realities.

Finally, as concerns evolution, I believe that the evolutive process of nature and the notion of substantial form can and must be reconciled. Yet Doctor Sheldon put his finger on the crucial point when he wrote: "The difficulty is to see how, if a substantial form is fixed and definite, it can contain a principle that allows for its own transformation, not merely into another substantial form, but into a greater one." This difficulty is a logical impossibility indeed; no substantial form can be transformed into another; when a substantial change occurs, the new substantial form is drawn out ("educed") the potentiality of matter according to the ultimate root dispositions introduced in matter by the physical agents which modify atomic structure and cause the transmutation of an element, or, in the case of compounds, by the activities of the very substances which are in the process of "corruption," and which will cease to exist at the instant in which the new substance comes into being.

The new substance can be more "perfect" — imply a higher degree of integration and individuality — in the ontological scale of physical nature, not only because matter (prime matter) "aspires" to the full actualization of all the forms it contains potentially, but because the new more perfect" substance results from an atomic redistribution which, in its capacity of an "ultimate disposition," requires the "eduction" of a higher form, or because, in the case of compounds, this new "more perfect" substance is the integration, in a new formal and subsisting unity, of the activities brought about in matter by the antecedent substances which "generate" it at the instant when they destroy each other (and whose forms remain virtually in the new substantial form then educed). This also presupposes that the entire cosmos and the interaction of all its energies co-operate in the production of the new substance, that is, in the "eduction" of the new substantial form.

Now, when it comes to the biological realm, a new problem arises; new living organism has of necessity the same specific substantial form as the organism or organisms from which it proceeds. How then, is biological evolution to be conceived in terms of substantial forms? I think there are two possible ways of explaining it. First of all, species (the ontological species, not the taxonomic species dealt with in botany, zoology or genetics) could be understood in a more dynamic as well as in a more extensive manner. When I say "a more extensive manner," I mean that such large groups as those which classification terms families, orders, etc., should perhaps be considered as belonging to one and the same ontological species. When I say "a more dynamic manner," I mean that the substantial form, in the realm of life, could be considered as protruding, in its virtualities, beyond the capacities of the matter it informs in given conditions, like, for example, an architectural style or poetic idea which we might imagine as thrown into matter and working it by itself. In short the substantial form would then be viewed as an ontological impulse realizing itself in various patterns along the line of a certain phylum. Yet such evolution could, of course, only take place within the limits of the phylum or the ontological species in question.

Secondly, concerning the hypothetical origin of the various phylums themselves, if now we take into account the transcendent action of the First Cause, we may obviously conceive that (particularly in those formative ages when the world was in the state of its greatest plasticity, and when the divine influx was penetrating nature and completing the work of creation) that existence-giving influx of God, passing through created beings and using them as instrumental causes, was able — and is still able — to heighten the vital energies which proceed from the form in the organism it animates, so as to produce within matter, I mean within the germ-cells, dispositions beyond the limits of that organism's specificity. As a result, at the moment of generation a new substantial form, specifically "greater" or more elevated in being, would be educed from the potentiality of matter thus more perfectly disposed.

These much-too-summary considerations may give perhaps some idea of the manner in which the fact of evolution (leaving aside what concerns the origin of man which entails quite different problems)* is to be integrated into Scholastic philosophy. Would such a way of thinking have a meaning from the Pragmatist point of view? That is another question.

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* The profound ontological break in continuity introduced, beneath the apparent continuity with which science deals, by the advent of a spiritual soul which can come to exist only as immediately created by God, presupposes not only the above-mentioned action of the creative influx, the principal agent of evolution, passing through nature, but also a special intervention of God to create a spirit, a soul "in His own image" which is the entelechy of a new living species, and by virtue of which the body of the first human being also represents, metaphysically speaking, an absolute beginning, and has God alone as its engendering cause and Father, even if the body in question resulted from the infusion of a human soul into a pre-ordained animal cell — which, by the very fact of the infusion was changed in its very essence, to the point of being contra-distinguished to the whole animal realm.

Gilson: From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again

For those interested in the philosophical problems related to the Darwinian version of biological evolution, as I am, From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution by Étienne Gilson is an excellent resource.

Book description from the back cover:

Darwin's theory of evolution remains controversial, even though most scientists, philosophers, and even theologians accept it, in some form, as a well-attested explanation for the variety of organisms. The controversy erupts when the theory is used to try to explain everything, including every aspect of human life, and to deny the role of a Creator or a purpose to life.

The overreaching of many scientists into fields beyond their competence is perhaps explained in part by the loss of an important idea in modern thinking─final causality or purpose. Scientists understandably bracket the idea out of their scientific thinking because they seek natural explanations and other kinds of causes. Yet many of them wrongly conclude from their selective study of the world that final causes do not exist at all and that they have no place in the rational study of life. Likewise, many erroneously assume that philosophy cannot draw upon scientific findings, in light of final causality, to better understand the world and man.

The great philosopher and historian of philosophy Etienne Gilson sets out in this book to show that final causality or purposiveness is an inevitable idea for those who think hard and carefully about the world, including the world of biology. Gilson insists that a completely rational understanding of organisms and biological systems requires the philosophical notion of teleology, the idea that certain kinds of things exist and have ends or purposes the fulfillment of which is linked to their natures─in other words, final causes. His approach relies on "philosophical reflection" on the facts of science, not upon theology or an appeal to religious authorities such as the Church or the Bible.

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"The objected of the present essay is not to make of final causality a scientific notion, which it is not, but to show that it is a philosophical inevitability and, consequently, a constant of biophilosophy, or philosophy of life. It is not, then a question of theology. If there is teleology in nature, the theologian has the right to rely on this fact in order to draw from it the consequences which, in his eyes, proceed from it concerning the existence of God. But the existence of teleology in the universe is the object of a properly philosophical reflection, which has no other goal than to confirm or invalidate the reality of it. The present work will be concerned with nothing else: reason interpreting sensible experience─does it or does it not conclude to the existence of teleology in nature?" ─Étienne Gilson

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