4 THE UNIVERSE. 



If, at the very outset of our studies, we cast a glance 

 upon the universe in general, we are astonished at its vast- 

 ness, and have to confess that merely human attempts to 

 explain its origin fall far behind the sublimity of its pro- 

 portions. 



For instance, the Chinese accounts of creation represent 

 the first organizer of chaos under the form of a feeble old 

 man, enervated and tottering, called Pan-Kou-Che, sur- 

 rounded by confused masses of rock, and holding a chisel 

 in one hand and a hammer in the other. He toils painfully 

 at his work, and, covered with perspiration, carves out the 

 crust of the globe, at the same time that he clears a path 

 through a wilderness of rocky masses. 



One shudders at the feebleness of the workman when 

 compared with the immensity of the task. Wellnigh lost 

 amidst enormous masses of shattered stone which surround 

 him on every side and encumber the picture, he is scarcely 

 seen, a pigmy executing a herculean task. 



On the other hand, the people of the North, looking upon 

 their own rugged land, thought that some god in his ter- 

 rible anger had broken up the surface of it, and gathered 

 the debris into heaps. To the children of Scandinavia this 

 deity was not a palsied and infirm old man ; they required 

 a divinity endowed with their own savage energy. In 

 their eyes it was the god of tempests, the redoubtable and 

 gigantic Thor, who, armed with a mighty hammer, and sus- 

 pended over the abyss, with furious blows broke up the 

 crust of the earth, and fashioned the rocks and mountains 

 with the splinters. Here we see a conception far before 

 that of the feeble old Pan-Kou-Che ; manly vigor is substi- 



