EVOLUTION AND JESUITISM

The relation of the theory of evolution to the teaching of the Jesuits is in many respects so important and so liable to misunderstanding that I have felt it very desirable to make it clear in the present work. I have, I think, clearly showed that the two doctrines are diametrically and irreconcilably opposed, and that the attempt of the modern Jesuits to reconcile the two antagonists is mere sophistry. I wrote with special reference to the works of the learned Jesuit, Father Erich Wasmann, not only because that writer deals with the subject more ably and comprehensively than most of his colleagues, but because he is more competent to make a scientific defence of his views on account of his long studies of the ants and his general knowledge of biology. He has made a vigorous reply to my strictures in an "open letter" to me, which appeared on 2nd May, 1905, in the Berlin (or Roman) Germania, and in the KÖlnische Volkszeitung.

The sophistical objections that Wasmann raises to my lectures, and his misleading statement of the most important problems, oblige me to make a brief reply in this "Postscript." It will be impossible, of course, to meet all his points here, and convince him of their futility. Not even the clearest and most rigorous logic makes a man a match for a Jesuit; he adroitly employs the facts themselves for the purpose of concealing the truth by his perverse misstatements. It is vain to hope to convince my opponent by rational argument, when he believes that religious faith is "higher than all reason." A good idea can be formed of his position from the conclusion of the eleventh chapter of his work, Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution (p. 307). "There can never be a real contradiction between natural knowledge and supernatural revelation, because both have their origin in the same Divine spirit." This is a fine comment on the incessant struggle that "natural science" is compelled to maintain against "supernatural revelation," and that fills the whole philosophical and theological literature of the last half century.

Wasmann's orthodox position is shown most clearly by the following statement: "The theory of evolution, to which I subscribe as a scientist and a philosopher, rests on the foundations of the Christian doctrine which I hold to be the only true one: 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'" Unfortunately, he does not tell us how he conceives this "creation out of nothing," and what he means by "God" and "heavens." I would recommend him to consult Troelslund's excellent work, The Idea of Heaven and of the World.

Almost at the same time that I was delivering my lectures at Berlin, Wasmann was giving a series of thoroughly Jesuitical lectures on the subject at Lucerne. The Catholic Lucerne journal, Vaterland, describes these lectures as "a work of emancipation" and "a critical moment in the intellectual struggle." It quotes the following sentence: "At the highest stage of the theistic philosophy of evolution is God, the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth; next to him, created by him, is the immortal soul of man. We reach this conclusion, not only by faith, but by inductive and strictly scientific methods. The system that is reared on the theistic doctrine of evolution is the sole rational and truly scientific system; the atheistic position is irrational and unscientific."

In order to see the untruth of this and the succeeding statements of the modern Jesuits, we have to remember that the Churches—both Protestant and Catholic—have vigorously combated the theory of evolution with all their power for thirty years, ever since the first appearance of Darwinism. The shrewd clergy saw more clearly than many of our naÏve philosophers that Darwin's theory of descent is the inevitable key-stone of the whole theory of evolution, and that "the descent of man from other mammals" is a rigorous deduction from it. As Karl Escherich well says: "Hitherto we read in the faces of our clerical opponents only hatred, bitterness, contempt, mockery, or pity in regard to the new invader of their dogmatic structure, the idea of evolution. Now (since Wasmann's apostasy) the assurances of the Catholic journals, that the Church has admitted the theory of evolution for decades, make us smile. Evolution has now pressed on to its final victory, and these people would have us believe that they were never unfriendly to it, never shrieked and stormed against it. How, they say, could anyone have been so foolish, when the theory of evolution puts the wisdom and power of the creator in a nobler light than ever." We find a similar diplomatic retreat in the popular work of the Jesuit, Father Martin Gander, The Theory of Descent (1904): "Thus the modern forms of matter were not immediately created by God; they are effects of the formative forces, which were put by the creator in the primitive matter, and gradually came into view in the course of the earth's history, when the external conditions were given in the proper combination." That is a remarkable change of front on the part of the clergy.

We see the astonishing system of the Jesuits, and of the papacy of which they are the bodyguard, not only in this impossible jumble of evolution and theology, but also in other passages of Wasmann, Gander, Gutberlet, and their colleagues. The serious dangers that threaten our schools, and the whole of our higher culture, from this Jesuitical sham-science, have been well pointed out lately by Count von Hoensbroech in the preface to his famous work, The Papacy in its Social and Intellectual Activity (1901). "The papacy," he says, "in its claim to a Divine authority, transmitted to it by Christ, endowed with infallibility in all questions of faith and morals, is the greatest, the most fatal, the most successful error in the whole of history. This great error is girt about by the thousands of lies of its supporters; this error and these lies work for a system of power and domination, for ultramontanism. The truth can but struggle against it.... Nowhere do we find so much and such systematic lying as in Catholic science, and in the history of the Church and the papacy; nowhere are the lies and misrepresentations more pernicious than here; they have become part and parcel of the Catholic religion. The facts of history tell plainly enough that the papacy is anything but a Divine institution; that it has brought more curses and ruin, more bloody turmoil and profanation, into humanity's holiest of holies, religion, than any other power in the world."

This severe judgment on the papacy and Jesuitism is the more valuable as Count von Hoensbroech was himself in the service of the Jesuit Congregation for forty years, and learned thoroughly all its tricks and intrigues. In making them public, and basing his charges on numerous official documents, he has done great service to the cause of truth and civilisation. I was merely repeating his well-founded verdict when, at the close of my first lecture, I described the papacy as the greatest swindle the world has ever submitted to.

A curious irony of Fate gave me an opportunity, the same evening, to experience in my own person the correctness of this verdict. A Berlin reporter telegraphed to London that I had fully accepted the new theory of Father Wasmann, and recognised the error of Darwinism; that the theory of evolution is not applicable to man on account of his mental superiority. This welcome intelligence passed from London to America and many other countries. The result was a flood of letters from zealous adherents of the theory of evolution, interrogating me as to my unintelligible change of front. I thought at first that the telegram was due to the misunderstanding or the error of a reporter, but I was afterwards informed from Berlin that the false message was probably due to a deliberate corruption by some religious person who thought to render a service to his faith by this untruth. He had substituted "supported" for "refuted," and "error" for "truth."

The struggle for the triumph of truth, in which I have had the most curious experiences during the last forty years, has brought me a number of new impressions through my Berlin lectures. The flood of calumnies of all kinds that the religious press (especially the Lutheran Reichsbote and the Catholic Germania) poured over me exceeded any that had gone before. Dr. Schmidt gave a selection from them in the Freie Wort (No. 4, p. 144). I have already pointed out, in the Appendix to the popular edition of the Riddle of the Universe [German edition], what unworthy means are employed by my clerical and metaphysical opponents for the purpose of bringing my popular scientific works into disrepute. I can only repeat here that the calumniation of my person does not move me, and does not injure the cause of truth which I serve. It is just this unusually loud alarm of my clerical enemies that tells me my sacrifices have not been in vain, and that I have put the modest key-stone to the work of my life—"The advancement of knowledge by the spread of the idea of evolution."

THE END

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