In his great treatise on _Genesis_ he says: "To
suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very
childish.... God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he
breathe upon him with throat and lips."
St. Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or
evolution theory, shows that "certain very small animals may not
have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have
originated later from putrefying matter." argues that, even if this
be so, God is still their creator, dwells upon such a potential
creation as involved in the actual creation, and speaks of animals
"whose numbers the after-time unfolded."
In his great treatise on the _Trinity_--the work to which he
devoted the best thirty years of his life--we find the full growth
of this opinion. He develops at length the view that in the
creation of living beings there was something like a growth--that
God is the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes; and
finally argues that certain substances are endowed by God with the
power of producing certain classes of plants and animals.
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