OH. in] THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 15 



conversant with the devastations wrought by volcanic 

 outbursts and earthquake shocks. As great districts 

 were seen to be depopulated by these catastrophies, 

 might not some even more violent cataclysm of the 

 same kind actually destroy all mankind, with the 

 animals and plants, in the comparatively small area 

 then known as ' the world ' ? The great flood, of 

 which all these nations appear to have retained tra- 

 ditions, was regarded as only the last of such destruc- 

 tive cataclysms ; and, in this way, there originated 

 the myth of successive destructions of the face of the 

 earth, each followed by the creation of new stocks of 

 plants and animals. This is the doctrine now known 

 as ' Catastrophism,' which we find prevalent in the 

 earliest traditions and writings of India, Babylonia, 

 Syria and Greece. 



But in ancient Egypt quite another class of 

 phenomena was conspicuously presented to the early 

 philosophers of the country. Instead of sudden floods 

 and terrible displays of volcanic and earthquake 

 violence, they witnessed the annual gentle rise and 

 overflowings of their grand river, with its beneficent 

 heritage of new soil ; and they soon learned to 

 recognise that Egypt itself so far as the delta was 

 concerned was ' the gift of the Nile/ 



From the contemplation of these phenomena, the 

 Egyptian sages were gradually led to entertain the 

 idea that all the features of the earth as they knew 



