It becomes therefore much more striking if views formed under such a condition of opinion are found to harmonize with modern ideas regarding "Creation" and organic life.
Now St.Augustin insists in a very remarkable manner on the merely derivative sense in which God's creation of organic forms is to be understood; that is, that God created them by conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions.

He says in his book on Genesis:[269] "Terrestria animalia, tanquam ex ultimo elemento mundi ultima; nihilominus _potentialiter_, quorum numeros tempus postea visibiliter explicaret." Again he says:-- "Sicut autem in ipso grano invisibiliter erant omnia simul, quae per tempora in arborem surgerent; ita ipse mundus cogitandus est, cum Deus _simul omnia creavit_, habuisse simul omnia quae in illo et cum illo facta sunt quando factus est dies; non solum coelum cum sole et luna et sideribus ...

; sed etiam illa quae aqua et terra produxit potentialiter atque causaliter, priusquam per temporum moras ita exorirentur, quomodo nobis jam nota sunt in eis operibus, quae Deus usque nunc operatur."[270] "Omnium quippe rerum quae corporaliter visibiliterque nascuntur, {265} occulta quaedam semina in istis corporeis mundi hujus elementis latent."[271] And again: "Ista quippe originaliter ac primordialiter in quadam textura elementorum cuncta jam creata sunt; sed acceptis opportunitatibus prodeunt."[272] St.Thomas Aquinas, as was said in the first chapter, quotes with approval the saying of St.Augustin that in the first institution of nature we do not look for _Miracles_, but for the _laws of Nature_: "In prima institutione naturae non quaeritur miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat, ut Augustinus dicit."[273] Again, he quotes with approval St.Augustin's assertion that the kinds were created only derivatively, "_potentialiter tantum_."[274] Also he says, "In prima autem rerum institutione fuit principium activum verbum Dei, quod de materia elementari produxit animalia, vel in actu vel _virtute_, secundum Aug.lib.5 de Gen.

ad lit.c.

5."[275] Speaking of "kinds" (in scholastic phraseology "substantial forms") latent in matter, he says: "Quas quidam posuerunt non incipere per actionem naturae sed prius in materia exstitisse, ponentes latitationem formarum.