170 Primitive Theories of the Origin of Man 



various and divergent views which primitive man has taken of his 

 own origin. I have confined myself to collecting examples of two 

 radically different views, which may be distinguished as the theory of 

 creation and the theory of evolution. According to the one, man was 

 fashioned in his existing shape by a god or other powerful being ; 

 according to the other he was evolved by a natural process out of 

 lower forms of animal life. Roughly speaking, these two theories 

 still divide the civilised world between them. The partisans of each 

 can appeal in support of their view to a large consensus of opinion ; 

 and if truth were to be decided by weighing the one consensus 

 against the other, with Genesis in the one scale and The Origin of 

 Species in the other, it might perhaps be found, when the scales 

 were finally trimmed, that the balance hung very even between 

 creation and evolution. 



