CHAPTER 11: THE HUMAN UNIVERSE Maritain and a Thomist View of
Evolution In May of 1940, Emile Mersch, S.J., one of the 20th
century's finest theologians, was fleeing through Belgium and
France before the Nazi armies. He was on his way to the Isle of
Jersey guiding two old fathers, and carrying the final draft of
the manuscript of his masterpiece, The Theology of the Mystical
Body. But he never arrived. Instead, he died on a roadside in
France and part of his manuscript disappeared. (1) Mersch's
great book was finally published using parts of earlier drafts,
and it contains a section on his philosophical views about the
unity of the human race and its relationship with the universe,
both themes that shed light on the dynamic nature of the human
form. Mersch realized that the human soul could be looked at
from two perspectives. If it were a purely spiritual form akin
to those attributed to the angels, there would have been only
one human being that would have contained in itself all the
riches of humanity. But